Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

You guys do know that Lz likes to be extra harsh to Playstation for personal (mostly) reasons, right?

...well, if not, there you go.

At the very least, yeah, most old 3D games pre-2003 are hard to look at if you didn't grow up in an age where you kind of had to use your imagination to make out anything you were seeing on a video screen.

I personally find the entire concert/discussion of 'games ageing poorly' to be just a little callous and harsh, more so than most other forms of critique centred around games. I think this because I look at games like Banjo-Kazooie, Super Mario 64 and Spyro 3 (just a few of my favourite games of that era) and if the best/first criticism of those games that I can think of is "they haven't aged very well" then I think that those games must be very good if such a vague and weak statement is all that can be put forth, especially if it is referring to nothing other than the graphics, which is of course gamers' favourite area of hyperbole.

I also look at it from the developers' perspective, and wonder how they could've reasonably made their games age better, and I find it extremely difficult to argue that they could've. Like is it reasonable to say that in amongst all the quite literary game changing elements introduced in Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time, that the development teams should've had mind to think of how those games will be viewed in 20 year's time and spent precious time and resources to combat against this issue? I don't think that is reasonable at all, especially when most people arguing this usually can't elaborate further and go into specifics on what has/hasn't 'aged well' in certain games, even with the benefit of hindsight and the advancement of technology. Like are we going to criticise every shooter that came before Resident Evil 4's amazing innovations and say "tut-tut, Resident Evil 4 managed it, why couldn't you?", never mind trying to compare Super Mario RPG and Final Fantasy XV. It is a fruitless exercise in my opinion.

I would rather argue that games that aren't fun to play now weren't really all that great even when they first released, I'd cite Crash Bandicoot as a series I am personally baffled at how kindly history has viewed it, when for me it is just as mediocre a series today as it was when I first played them not long after they came out.

There's also the issue of 'nostalgia' and how that can cloud the judgement of older games but that is a whole separate issue with its own problems.

@Shinion I agree. A lot of people just throw around an "aged badly" without even explaining exactly what is wrong with a game.

@Vinny I mean, in an era when games are tossed out broken/incomplete/buggy/all of the problems and defended under the umbrella tag line of 'games as a service' and the release now, patch it later mentally that many 'AAA' games have I do find it amusing that it is SNES/N64/PSX/PS2 games that are most often criticised for ageing poorly. I mean, I can play Chrono Trigger for many, many great hours and have access to all of its content 20 years on but take the most recent Star Wars Battlefront for instance and I'll be lucky if anyone will be playing that game this time next year after the sequel comes out, not even including the Season Pass content that I sure as heck am not paying for. How's about that for a game that has aged poorly! Or even something like Evolve for crying out loud.

Then there's annualised franchises like CoD/FIFA/Assassin's Creed where they cater to an exclusive set of people, and are made virtually irrelevant to most people approximately 365 days after their launch. And these are decisions that EA and Activision made years ago that damage these games, they're not at all interested in people talking about Advanced Warfare in 10 years, they're just interested in making quick and easy money. How does that compare to Super Mario 64's slightly annoying camera and rough graphics?

I find a lot of games from the last couple of generations are far more susceptible to fading into virtual irrelevance over time rather than a handful of retro games whose rough edges have become rougher inevitably as technology advances. 99% of games would be lucky to be held in as high regard many years later as Shadow of the Colosus and Resident Evil 4.

Saying a game hasn't aged well is nothing to do with how good the game was, but how it is now. Sure, it's not reasonable to expect a developer to future-proof their game 20 years, but it's perfectly natural to judge a game by today's standards. If the game is not enjoyable today, I am not going to play it today. That's a sad fact. I can appreciate how X game was good for its time, but if I can't enjoy it these days for whatever reason (usually because there are games around that have vastly improved the formula), then I see no reason to play it other than for historical value.

There's not necessarily a positive correlation between a game's quality and how well it has apparently aged. You could perhaps argue the reverse - a good game is likely to attract copies, revisions and sequels. A more rapidly evolving genre/formula is going to make a game look more archaic. Look at Goldeneye, for console shooters.

@Buizel Yours is one of the more reasonable posts I have seen on this topic, and your main point is hard to argue against, there will of course always be the question of "Is this game worth me buying/playing now?" regardless of whether it is 1, 2, 10, 20 or I'm sure hopefully before we all die we'll even still be talking about games from 50 years ago. But my personal stance is that if a game isn't worth playing now, it probably was generous to say it ever deserved to be worth anyone's time/money. Your example of Goldeneye is also a good one as yes there A a gazillion FPS to play now and lots of them have online, but I don't think that Goldeneye as a product is tarnished in any meaningful way just because most people nowadays prefer to play CoD or Overwatch. Same could be said for Halo 3 which was the FPS of the last generation and I'm sure the same will be said about Overwatch once its inevitable sequel takes its place.

Games like WoW or LoL are true exceptions that codify the 'games as a service' mantra and are still played by millions on a regular basis years after their original release. So it is in my opinion that holding the inevitably of games becoming rougher around the edges as time passes against games from mainly before the turn of the millennia as a uniquely bad thing that only those games have is unfair. I think it's only fair to criticise them on their merits and judge the specific issues that were apparent even in the year of their release (I wasn't playing SM64 in 1996 I was too busy being born but I'm sure loads of people found the camera annoying even then) or you realise that practically every game will fade over time and only the truly, truly great games can claim to be 'timeless'.

And this is coming from someone who isn't the oft scorned at 'nostalgia blinded gamer' as I only played the vast majority of the classics of those eras in the last few years. I just judged them how I would any other game and how I'm sure I would've judged them if I played them for the first time in 1996.

I think remakes need more credit for what they do. They take these "poorly aged" games and update them to today's standards.

Also, to add to the previous conversation, Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow is the perfect example of a poorly aged game. The franchise made so many updates that the originals are terrible in comparison. The only reason anyone would play them is for the nostalgia. However, they were pretty awesome back in the day.

Wow, this thread hasn't been updated in a while, has it?

I think Pikmin 4 is the 3DS scrolling game. I don't want it to be true, but it seems a lot like Nintendo to not understand the difference between a true sequel and a spinoff.

@Nicolai
I thought that Nintendo said that the 3DS game was completely different to Pikmin 4

This is a belief, not an opinion. Know the difference or face DOOM!

Doom looks terrible and was never fun.

Pikmin 4 was meant to be already near completion where as Pikmin 3ds looks like a work in progress. I could see Pikmin 4 being a Switch game they are keeping up their sleeve to be an E3 announcement with a release date to tie up a hole in the release calendar.

I haven't yet seen official statement, not even after a quick google search. If someone finds it, let me know.

@jump, it certainly looked that way to us, but that could be simply because of the manner in which they showed it, which only indicates that they're holding it up until the dust settles on the Switch.

@TheLZdragon, bring on the doom, then. It sure seems like an opinion to me. Is it because it is speculation on something that has a correct answer?

@Nicolai
I'm not sure, but I thought they said that was the case when they revealed Pikmin 3DS

An opinion is a statement based on your subjective thoughts about a person, event, or fact.

A belief is a statement based on what you perceive to be a fact, hence more objective.

@shaneoh, I don't think so, I just checked the announcement trailer. It's odd that everyone seems so sure that they're different.

@TheLZdragon, fair enough. So, does that mean I shouldn't post unpopular beliefs, just unpopular opinions then? Should I start an Unpopular Gaming Beliefs Thread?

One man once ruled this thread.... he is gone now... banned to oblivion by the higher power. How i miss his ramblings sometimes:

I kind of feel like the way we talk about games is... weird. When we talk about every other entertainment medium, we don't talk exclusively about the quality of the individual pieces of the films they review. We talk about how they fit together. In games, reviews end up being a really stretched out version of this:
Gameplay is _____
Graphics are _____
Music is _____
Story is _____
FINAL SCORE: Numbers/Numbers

Now some sites and critics are better about this than others (see this site, Kotaku once in a blue moon and especially Errant Signal) but those are still only a few critics. As a whole game critics need to be better about considering not just the pieces of the games they review, but how those pieces fit.

Yes! That's exactly right. A Nintendo representitive could easily comment on your statement, even refuting it and making your argument moot. If you wanted it to be an opinion, you gotta talk from a more personal level. Like, "I would be okay if it was Pikmin 4 because it looks that good" or something.

@MrMario02 I see that all the time with movies and anime. I mean, yeah, regular don't do it, and it's not as prevelant in movies, but it still happens. I mean, just go to rottentomatoes, IMBD, or heck, random blogs (they have about as much credibility at this point, it seems). However, I will say that it's arguably more important to break things down in games, because its interactive entertainment, and there's a lot more ways it could be appealing or problematic, depending on the individual.

EDIT: Wait, are you saying that a lot of websites still score individual aspects of games, or are you including the whole +/- deal in your example? There's a big difference between the two (hint: only one of them is helpful).