Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Even if you don’t like the Wii U, to say it’s “overrated” is actually insane

Side-tangent and semi related, but “overrated” is just one of those words that the internet has just completely destroyed any meaning of

Okay, allow me to rephrase my statement: I don't understand the sudden love that the Wii U has been getting as of late on the internet. Hopefully that is better phrasing. I swear that has been happening a lot since the announcement / release of the Switch 2 🤔.

During the whole war of Mario Kart World vs Sonic Racing: Crossworlds (which thankfully seems to have died down a bit), one thing I had seen people bring up a lot was that SRC had a superior character roster to MKW because SRC had crossover characters, whereas MKW omitted all the crossover characters that were present in 8 Deluxe. In my opinion, crossover characters detract from a game's character roster. First of all, crossover characters reduce a game's immersion. I know most people don't probably care much about the immersion of something like Mario Kart, but I think keeping the characters all in-universe does benefit the game's identity. Secondly, crossover characters just feel corporate to me. Like, I can't look at Spongebob in Crossworlds and not just see the contract being signed by Sega and Nickelodeon to use Squarepants as a marketing ploy.

So yeah, I'm not a fan of crossover characters in games.

(Note: I make an exception for Smash Bros. I'm not the biggest fan of Smash, but being a celebration of gaming is core to its identity, so I think it is a rare case where crossover characters have a greatly positive impact on the game.)

@UpsideDownRowlet
I'm also against with crossover in general, not just only in video gaming.
Crossover can be harmful if the franchise get collaborated with another franchise especially from different age rating franchise which possibly damaging the brand image of the main franchise with inappropriate perception.
I will feel upset if somebody crossover kids franchise like Hello Kitty, Barbie, etc with rated 18+ franchise that have nothing to do with the main franchise and it looks selling drugs / poison as candies for kids. That's something completely wrong from my POV as parent even I'm not a parent.
I blame the popularity and the society that caused the crossover ideas.

@Nep-Nep-Freak Have to agree there. There is a lot of revisionist history over the Wii U. Where was the love when it was needed! Lol.

@UpsideDownRowlet
I don’t like crossover characters when it’s very clear they didn’t put as much time into them as they did for others. Crossworlds is a big example of this. It’s hard not to wish they had Sonic-adjacent characters exclusively when it’s very clear that they just did it to have the name of the character and not much more.
Don’t play the games and have no idea what the fan consensus is on them but I think Mortal Kombat does a great job at incorporating guest characters while making them feel like they’re actually entering the world of the people they’re facing.
It really depends for me on if the game makes an attempt to have it feel like the characters are entering into the world of the series rather than just being an advertisement for the character’s home game/movie/IP

@Nep-Nep-Freak I'm with you on the Wii U revisionism. As someone who likes the console, I'm not going to gas it up as being better than it actually was just because it had "fun menus" or whatever. Says a lot that people are focusing on that particular aspect whenever the subject comes up.

@Nep-Nep-Freak Maybe they have a new appreciation for the system. Coming as someone who had (and still has) a Wii U during its heyday, and likes my Wii U, it did get a lot of flak from the gaming community for not having bigger name games on it. Although, I don't think Neptunia appeared on the Wii U at all, not even in Japan. Come to think of it, the only JRPG I have on it is Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE.

Wii U still got some third party games like Skylanders and Disney Infinity, but bigger name games like Call of Duty or various other titles skipped the Wii U. The lack of most third party games is why the Wii U never saw certain games. I don't think it has to do with game content. The Wii U even had Devil's Third, a mature third person shooter. I know this because I'm one of the few who played it.

I also feel the Wii U hype some fans have over it is strange. I did like the Wii U for what it was at the time, but ultimately it just was not in a position to be the best version of itself. Not only was it lacking in 3rd party games (and not just AAA games, but even a lot of major indie games), but Nintendo seemed disinterested in doing a lot with it. It almost felt like they announced every Wii U game they planned to make ever during its first year, and half of those games weren't interested in using its features, even when they would've been cool and made their games more interesting. It's a shame since even the smaller ideas for Wii U were great, like I loved the use of Gyro and touch screen for parts of Wind Waker HD or switching between the gamepad and Wiimote + nun-chuck for Pikmin 3, I thought those were genuinely neat, unique additions even if they weren't as game changing as other games tried to be and I badly wish I had experience an entire generation of Gamepad use as fun and cool as that (along with the more dramatic uses of it like Mario Maker, Nintendo Land etc)

Mostly I just don't like how most of the praise is "Nintendo sure did make some quality games for it" as if that's a remotely unique thing in any point in time or even something Nintendo did at their best on Wii U. Unless you were 10 when it came out or missed out on a large portion of Nintendo consoles in the past, I can't imagine why anyone's favorite Nintendo console would be Wii U. There's no reality where Wii U is a stand out era of Nintendo making quality games, unless the part standing out is how few games they made for it. (which arguably isn't even true either considering where they would've been on N64 if they didn't have Rare :V)

Yeah I don't get the romanticisation of the Wii U.

People complain now that we have no "big" games (i.e. 3D Mario or Zelda) announced yet for the Switch 2...but Wii U spent basically all of its life without these. 3D World is fantastic but not quite what people were hoping for when it comes to 3D Mario, and Zelda was absent until the very end. No Metroid, no mainline Kirby, no mainline Fire Emblem, no mainline Animal Crossing... We did get Mario Kart and Smash Bros - but those are a given it seems.

I think a lot of the things that were great about the system no longer hold true either. Its best games are all on Switch (with some, like Mario Kart Deluxe, expanding significantly). The Gamepad almost feels like the prototype for the Switch - tbh for me the best thing about it was always off-TV play, which is pretty much the whole concept of the Switch. People often cite Virtual Console - and while Wii U VC is pretty comprehensive and has some titles still not on Switch, the Switch emulation is far better and offers portability. Moreover things that were never too great about the system are even harder to ignore in the modern day - the system is sluggish as hell and the lack of suspend/sleep mode really doesn't help.

I loved my Wii U. It was a novel concept and, as always, Nintendo produced some amazing games for it. But I would take the Switch or Gamecube over it in a heartbeat.

I was around for the Wii U. As a Nintendo fan I had a good time with it. Also as a Nintendo fan, I never want to go back. No amount of “personality”, “charm” or menu music could change the fact that those droughts were absolutely dreadful

As for Crossovers, I don’t mind, they can be fun, but they’re one of those things where you have to know what you’re doing, you have to know your audience, and you gotta know your limits. Seeing Snake show up in Rainbow Six Siege and team up with Sam Fisher is genuinely exciting and awesome, seeing Beavis and Butthead in Call of Duty Warzone just fills me with apathy and confusion. Seeing Mega Man and PAC-Man in SRC is really cool to see, why are there all of these Nickelodeon characters. Predator, Jason Voorhes and Freddy Kruger in Mortal Kombat rules, why is Neagan in Tekken? Why is Clive and Noctis in Tekken and not Tifa? What the hell are Cristiano Ronaldo and Salvatore Ganacci doing in CotW?(yes I know the answer is Saudi Blood Money). See what I mean? Know what you’re doing and know where to stop. And there has to be real drive to do it. MK Vs DC may not have worked, but Joker as a guest in MK did, MK characters as guest in injustice did

I feel like the baby characters destroy immersion more than Link does... they're just weird, especially when playing against the adult versions.

I generally don't mind crossovers if they're done well. I do like how Mario Kart 8 (Deluxe) did them, actually. It didn't go overboard with that idea, and the crossover content only takes up a small fraction of the game. Not counting the amiibo costumes, there's only four franchises the game crossed over with, and all of them were made by Nintendo themselves. Zelda, F-Zero, Animal Crossing, and Splatoon. With all that said, I'm fine with Mario Kart World not having crossover characters. After all, it does have Mario in the name.

Moving to a more recent example, Sonic Racing CrossWorlds... I will begin this by saying it does look like a solid kart racer. But the way it did crossovers, I dunno... seeing characters like Spongebob alongside Sonic and company does not sit right with me. It just feels really out of place. I never liked Nicktoons, either - unpopular opinion, I know - so that was disappointing for me. Why not have crossovers with more of Sega's other series instead, like in All-Stars Racing and Transformed? I would have been fine if it was just Sonic characters, as well. I'm glad there are people who like CrossWorlds, by the way. I just think the way it handled crossovers was a little weird.

@Sunsy Ah yeah there's nothing wrong with playing games on easy mode. I'm actually considering playing RPGs on easy/casual mode, honestly... since they're pretty complex and long for me. The next time I play Xenoblade Chronicles, I'll do just that. Some of its bosses were giving me a lot of trouble.

Actually I just realized if we consider unpopular as determined by market factors and sales versus unpopular on the internet, I simply am always with the market, well, until I feel like the market diminished to the point where it's basically just the fans/internet controlling the commerce. So for instance

I liked the N64 over the Gamecube. I also almost like Mario 64 and Star Fox 64, heck, even Wave Race 64, over Ocarina of Time. But I also like Ocarina way more than Majora's Mask.

I prefer Rare with Goldeneye and Perfect Dark to later Nintendo collaborators like Retro with Metroid Prime and Silicon Knights with Eternal Darkness. I think Jet Force Gemini is one spectacular game.

I like Zelda over Metroid, always have, feel like I always will, despite Metroid often getting a great deal more credibility for "hardcore" gamers I feel like.

I don't actually like the Gamecube basically at all and don't enjoy the system.

Skyward Sword is one of my favorite Zelda games. I also like Zelda 2 more than Zelda 1.

I pretty much enjoyed the Wii U over the Switch and Wii until recently, pretty much entirely because it had a Star Fox and dedicated 3D action mario Title (felt like Miyamoto was in charge again like the old days) (Also, this is where the market people I grew up aren't with me but I think they all just got old and stopped playing games in general)

I don't really enjoy Fire Emblem that much, permadeath is annoying and I feel like the games were designed around it, so I actually liked Awakening and stuff less than Radiant Dawn which makes no sense.

I think Monolith Games are a train wreck in slow motion, Koh Kojima and Gen Yokota I feel like don't play any games or something. However, I have still played many of their games to completion.

I think Melee was a downgrade over the original Smash, the AI is more annoying and the controls don't match what you need out of an aerial fighting game.

I don't like Sakurai games basically in general, I thought Kirby was at it's best when it was HAL as a team, so that means Dream Land and adventure and stuff. I thought Rainbow Curse on Wii U was as good as any Kirby game or certainly any Sakurai game for some time.

I like the GBA over the DS because it has more action games like Mega Man Zero and Sonic Advance.

I guess I just feel like the last survivor of the era of people who just voted with their wallet, and let that be the end of it.

That said I finally pushed through big games like Xenoblade 2 and stuff in the Switch era and I could change my opinion on all the previously mentioned things, but those are all things I feel as of now and why I switched to PS2 back in that gen.