Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@Maxz: I agree with the vast majority of your post. Games like Mario Maker are more suited for Let's Plays, I think; there's not much there to interrupt other than what's going on in front of your eyeballs. Same with watching competitive Pokemon battles since none of the videos that I've seen in that regard have any meaningful story, text, cutscenes, etc.

I've never been that into speedrunning as more often than not it involves playing and/or "beating" a game by breaking the rules, physics, etc. in said game (which I view as a form of cheating). I don't mind speedrunners that play through the entire game as fast as possible (using level/stage skippers like SMB's warp zones are fine as those were intended by design). I do acknowledge that plenty of people enjoy speedrunning and that it has its benefits (such as the Awesome Games Done Quick event).

I typically watch Let's Plays of games that I don't believe I'll ever play, either because I'm not interested enough to play it myself (like FNAF), or because I don't believe it'll come to a system I own or because it was on a retro system/a game that's very hard to obtain/on a system that doesn't have enough other interesting games to entice me to get one (I watched a full no commentary play through last year of Batman: Arkham Asylum shortly before playing Arkham City on my Wii U for some story background). Once in a great while I'll watch some commentary on a game that I'm at least mildly interested in but don't feel like buying yet for whatever reason (Firewatch and Among The Sleep).

I don't intend to come off as hating LPers/Youtubers as people; many of them seem like they're genuinely nice people both on and off camera, and some truly have touching, serious videos; I'm just not fond of many of their methods of calling attention to themselves with stunts that would earn me weird looks in public should I try the same things.

@jump It's a Platinum game, what else did we expect? To be fair, I do plan on playing NieR: Automata later this year, but with Horizon and Zelda, it has to wait. I even skipped Gravity Rush 2 because of those two games, and Nioh too. I'm building a mental backlog of games I have to buy at a later point, and there are too many at this point..

@Maxz Procedural generation is like CGI in film; If it's good, you don't even notice it. Most games are build with some form of procedural generation. Nobody manually placed every blade of grass in Breath of the Wild for example. Most of the foliage in games these days is done through algorithms and procedural generation. I think the issue is when a game tries to sell itself on the premise of PG alone. Especially when it's not really good (No Man's Sky).

I've got a couple of unpopular ones:
The learning curve of Dwarf Fortress isn't that bad.
The UI for DF isn't terrible either.

@Octane Well, yeah. I'm not boycotting the use of PG as some sort of weird moral stance. I don't have anything against its use in games, and it obviously plays an integral role in filling in aesthetic details in practically all modern games, as well as stuff like shaping large swathes of landscape in a more true-to-life manner than a human could ever manage. Humans slip into patterns incredibly. RNG is less fickle. Or more fickle. Or, whatever; less predictable and more random.

I'm sure they've got algorithms that absolutely nail what a convincing distribution of trees looks like, how to the land should rise and fall, how clouds should drift across the sky and in what formations, etc., all without the glaring repetitions that a human spamming C&P would probably end up producing. These things are all wonderful, and take a great deal of strain off the developers to actually make important design decisions rather than fumbling around with clouds and grass.

My post - which I'd hoped made clear - was about games where these explicit design decisions have almost entirely been forfeited to the PG engine; where there are no concrete levels, and where everything is built from scratch uniquely every time you enter a stage. Of course, a huge amount of time in these games must be spent on designing a PG engine that works flawlessly, and that can be relied upon to produce a near infinite number of levels that are actually compelling to play and not inherently broken. That in itself is arguably more challenging than just building the levels by hand, but still leads to a different type of game experience; the type I was trying to address in my initial post.

So as I've said, I've got nothing against PG as a technology. But my post was about games that are built around it as a core mechanic for real-time level generation; not just as a handy tool for smoothing out grunt-work in development.

I believe that the low cost of content these days has had some negative impacts. 10+ years ago the only way to get new content was to go to the shops and physically buy a game. And most games were about the same price. These days there are game bundles, free to play releases and DLC packs for extending the play time of most releases. And if you don't get the game in the first month? You can expect heavy discounts not long after.

This has changed the way consumers churn through games. It used to be that you'd buy your $70AU+ game and that'd be the game you'd play to death. Even if that game wasn't really that great. These days a Humble Bundle can come up where you get a whole bunch of games for $15 or so. Of which you'll play through maybe one of them before going back to that new game mode that's just been released for Overwatch. Or you'll see a new game come out and not buy it because full RRP has somehow become "too expensive" for a game like Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Same deal with console launches. It used to be that one great game was enough for a console launch. We also didn't expect to get a game for free when we got that console. And now the Switch is coming out and 1-2 Switch not being bundled is a massive miss-step.

I'm not entirely convinced these are good things.

Why are gamers such whiners when it comes to reviews? You aren't supposed to burst into tears and write hate comments when, say, Jim Sterling gives the new Zelda a 7/10 instead of a 10/10. Seriously, you have to be a certain kind of pathetic to be bothered by that! This isn't new behavior, (see the response to Zero Punctuation's review of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a game from 2008, for proof of that) but these days, it seems worse than ever, because now people are upset at reviews that are positive, but not positive enough.

To quote Yahtzee Crosshaw in his great response video to the hate he got for the SSBB review:
"It's worth remembering that all reviews are subjective personal opinions, and if you personally enjoyed a game, they really shouldn't get to you (unless of course, there's a despicable little niggling doubt in the back that maybe you're not having as much fun as you've convinced yourself you're having, but doesn't go away no matter how many times you try to slap it down with a wet flannel of weak excuses like this one)."

@MrMario02 i agree and I believe that most people will agree with you on that. That being said.... not an unpopular opinion

Jim Sterling is a "PC master race" person, So i'm not surprised he would give that kind of score.

Not really. He gives a lot of favorable reviews to console games. He hated the weapon system and the stamina bar, which are pretty central to the game's mechanics.

Matter of fact, here are his other Zelda reviews since his site started:

Hyrule Warrior Legends: 9.5/10
Twilight Princess HD: 8.8/10
Triforce Heroes: 8/10
Majora's Mask 3D: 9.5/10

I'm mainly a "PC Master Race" person, but BotW is a masterpiece. We're not all terrible!

I think you just proved his point

These are pretty unpopular:

Majora's Mask is better than Breath of the Wild.

I liked Wii Music when it first came out.

Brawl is better than Melee (Wii U is better than both).

Mario Super Sluggers is my favorite Mario sports game.

The PS4 controller is the worst controller I've ever used.

It's broken on me 6 times (the right trigger keeps breaking), the touch pad is oversized stupid and pointless, the light bar is annoying, the option/share buttons are too hard to press, the battery life sucks beyond belief, and most important of all — the home button is in the worst place imaginable; I can't even count how many times I've hit that stupid button by accident when playing games the requires the joysticks. I hate the PS4 controller.

Hmmm? Isn't a home button in the centre of a controller pretty much standard? (XB360, XBO, PS3...)

Completely agree. In fact, I think I prefer the feel of it to the Pro Controller, in terms of both weight and button placement (and of course, functionality).

On the topic of controllers...I've never really had an issue with controller battery life. Surely you're never far enough from a charging point that it becomes so big of a deal?

Ok i see this is a thread where i have to be arrogant enough to know whats unpopular.

Just because games are colourful and try to be cute doesnt make them feel warm. In fact i often feel more warmth from many gritty games.
I think the swan song of the wii u is actually color splash and not botw. Even with that bad battlesystem.

Wii U gamepad was ok...

Switch is what the Wii U should have been. The gamepad really didn't add that much to gaming.

The home button on the XBoxOne controller is at the top, far away from the joysticks. I have no problems with that controller (or the Wii U or Switch Pro controllers). The PS4 controller's home button is at the bottom, protruding up, right between the joysticks. My thumb accidentally hits that button constantly, which pops me out of the game and into the console home menus. I've lost so many EA UFC 2 fights on the PS4 because of this. I eventually re-bought that game for my XBoxOne and have been enjoying it there with no problems every since. I'm even putting off buying Horizon Zero Dawn because I dread using the PS4 controller for that many hours again. I mostly stick to my XBO and Switch because the PS4 controller sucks so bad. That's my unpopular opinion. @Buizel

I dont like the PS4 controller for many reasons, namely using micro-USB that can disconnect with use, the Options and Share buttons being surprsingly harder to hit than youd think, that useless light bar and touch pad, and the triggers activating if i put the thing down.

Its comfortable, and better than the PS3 by miles, but that battery life. Once Youve ised a joycon, Wii U or Switch Pro Controller, you dont go back to seeing that message over and over easily.

Want an unpopular opinion?

I think the PS4 is boring. Not bad. Not a poorly crafted machine. Just...boring. lifeless. What made the PS, PS2 and PS3 when affordable so fun to me was the experience and the games.

I sat through the Wii U with droughts and the games that did show up being fun at a minimum and interesting to me. I would rather that than a machine that gets games by the bucketload and very few if any interest me.

PlayStation feels very much like a shell to me. Maybe I never grew up? Maybe I want my childhood back? Who knows right?

I've still got a ways to go, but right now I don't think the Elder Scrolls is very good. I played Morrowind for a little bit years ago and never got into it. I'm playing Oblivion for the first time now and am underwhelmed. I am a Warrior class but still can't do much when fighting. I tend to eventually default to just running for my life whenever possible, I just had to get some dust from a Will-o-Wisp and sat there watching an NPC take it out for no apparent reason because I couldn't touch it. Now I have to kill 5 vampires in a cave to move on and I can't even make a scratch in the first one before it kills me, even though I only have to be level 2 to do the mission and I am at level 3. I'm still looking forward to trying Skyrim on Switch if I can beat Oblivion in time, but I'm having a hard time figuring out why everyone thinks this series is so good.

If a games average review score is 7/10 - it's a good game!

A lot of people seem to lose their minds if a game that they we're hyped for ends up coming in at 7/10ish, which just makes no sense to me..! If a reviewer uses a 10 point scale to 'score' a game, there are 10 variables - ranging from 10 (Masterpiece) to 1 (Unplayable trash) ..on this scale, 5-6 is average - anything above 6 is, by definition, above average/good!

Take some N64 Metacritic scores:

There are the very best (9-10) - Perfect Dark, Ocarina of Time, GoldenEye, Mario 64 ..masterpieces!

Then there are really great games (8-8.9) - Mario Kart 64, Diddy Kong Racing, Extreme G, Mario Party, F-Zero X ..are they great? YES ..are they everyone's idea of absolute perfection? Probably not.

Then there are the 6's and 7's - Super Smash Bros., Mario Party, Quake, Yoshi's Story, Duke Nukem 64, Mission:Impossible ..these games are far from being trash! Smash was great...if you like that sort of thing! Mario Party was a great, fun party game...just not quite 'gaming perfection'! Yoshi's Story was a lot of fun...but maybe not challenging enough for some! Quake wasn't everyone's cup of tea...but many rate it as the best shooter ever! I had a lot of fun with Mission:Impossible and Duke Nukem too - but they perhaps didn't have the lasting appeal of a Perfect Dark/GoldenEye..

Quake is a great example - Metascore: only 74 ...why? It's not for everyone! My sister wouldn't play it...I have friends who didn't really like it...but there are those of us that absolutely love it - and revere the developers as demi-God's! There's brutality, there's gore - Trent Resnor did the score...these are things that aren't to everyone's tastes - but if they are to your tastes - you'd probably rate the game closer to an 8 or a 9 (maybe even a 10) youself! ..you are the guy/girl that the developers were targeting! I personally prefer Quake to the much-better-reviewed Rayman 2 (Metascore: 90) - Rayman might be a more well rounded game, but I'm, personally, more of a Quake fan..!

Don't dismiss games because of a perceived 'average' review - read the criticism, watch some gameplay, find a reviewer who likes the things you like and see what they think - make up your own mind! ..a 9/10 is a game that you probably can't go too far wrong with - but you might just find a 6-8/10 game that is more suited to your individual tastes!