Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@Magitek_Knight LOL, a "little" stress?!? Soulsborne is "scream obscenities, snap the controller in half, and throw it at the screen" "chill" for me

@Magitek_Knight You must be very skilled if Bloodborne is a little stress and Sunshine is a chill game.

Bloodborne is pretty chill

It's Demon's Souls that's the real stress inducer lmao

@Lindhardt It's more like, the game feels unhurried and you're focused enough on what you're doing that actual outside stressors don't factor in. I'm weird, I know, but if I'm fully engaged with a bait/punish tactic in Bloodborne I'm not focused on how much my back hurts from work, you feel?

I feel like I'm coming off as a troll here and need to clarify: The slower pacing is a big part of the appeal for a "chill" game. I'd say an old school dungeon crawl could be a good example of how a game can be hard, without losing the progress at your own pace "chill" factor.

I'm getting quite disillusioned by all the resolution/framerate obsession that's been taking over the site recently.

Granted, I do play most modern multiplats (like DQXI & Trials of Mana) on PS4 (though I played the Switch demo of DQXI, which I thought was an immaculate conversion) & tend to play my Switch docked mostly, so maybe I just don't run into the more troublesome performance issues (and I can completely understand being upset with framerates that drop into the low 20's & 10's, as well as huge resolution drops, like XC2 in spots during handheld play), but it seems like the prevailing thought is that 720p & 30fps is completely unacceptable anymore, & I just can't relate. Sure, the higher benchmarks are nice when hit, but I don't think 720p or 30fps particularly hinder a game in any way, and even just a few years ago the pixel counting obsession hadn't yet penetrated the Nintendo community, so it's disappointing to see it finally take hold.

I can't possibly imagine wasting even a minute of my time reading the comments on nearly any site.

@NEStalgia I haven't had much in the way of camera issues in the challenge caves when playing Sunshine. Once in a great while the camera will get stuck on something, but it's rare enough that it doesn't really stick in my craw.

It's not quite as polished as, say, Mario Odyssey, but coming off Mario 64? The tightness of the controls, and the responsiveness of the camera in general, are a revelation.

Have to agree. The specs stopped mattering the day everyone stopped putting the number of bits on the front of the console.

Agree about frame rate and resolution. I think a lot of it has to do with fans of the other consoles really playing up fps and resolution as a way to knock the Switch and its games. I understand people are sensitive to frame drops and low fps, but there's no way 30fps and/or 720p is "unplayable" in "current year". That's just hyperbolic nonsense. Its fine if you choose to stick with 60fps games only, but yeah.

Further, people don't seem to make a big deal out of games like MH World running at 30fps on PS4.

I don't know much about technical specs, but I have a PS4 and a Switch. Owning both I tend to buy muliplats on the PS4 since I play the Switch docked normally anyway. Remove the potential for handheld play and it's obvious that one version is worse. Not a fault with the Switch, really, just that there seem to be ports that have trouble translating for whatever reason.

I dont know if this is an unpopular opinion but, as far as video games go, think 2020 was pretty good. I thought it was gonna be a disaster (like everything else).

I think frame rates are important but only for really twitchy genres like platformers and beat 'em ups, and especially with competitive online play.

Consistency matters way more than raw numbers though so even 30 can be good enough so long as it's stays there.

However, anyone moaning about frame rate drops in an RPG wants their head examining.

It's only going to get worse now that the next generation consoles are pushing for 120fps and a steady 60 probably won't even be regarded as good enough.

Not even remotely.

Games are more about the story and experience than graphics and frames per second.

@theWildLink Yes. I do indeed have a strong admiration for Mario, DOOM, Dark Souls and F-Zero's prevailing sense of strong and gripping narrative quality

Unpopular opinion: I like cloud streaming games. I just bought Control on Switch and play a lot on Stadia.

Nocturne isn't hard

That would be covered under game "experience" ... I'm not sure why the acerbic wit is needful here.

I think that streaming has its place, and you certainly wouldn't get a game like Control coming to the Switch if it wasn't for it.

However, you're still looking at that subset of games that are too demanding to run on native hardware and have gameplay that's tolerant enough to latency and occasional dropouts. Simultaneously, they're only going to work for the section of the playerbase with internet access that's low latency, high bandwidth, reliable and affordable.

Combine all those things, and I'd think that you're maybe looking at a dozen games a year at the moment worth considering bringing to the Switch via streaming, and it's not going to be possible to make them available to all regions.

Also, out of interest, how does it play when you're out and about? My experience of streaming so far is that once you're off the home WiFi pretty much everything tends towards unplayable.

Yeah, while none of those games have much in the way of narrative, they've all got some very upfront themes and rich backstories for those who want to delve into the lore.

You're into the realms of Tetris and Picross before you're truly looking at games without any story elements at all.

@Matt_Barber it plays great out and about. I played Assassins Creed Odyssey on my phone at a garage last week using data. Ran perfectly. 4G and now 5G is helping with that.
I do understand the major pitfalls of it though. Its not an option for everyone. Internet speed is poor in many places. So straight away the player base is limited. But it's an option that a certain percentage of people can take advantage of so why not?!
The biggest thing in its favour is no downloading massive game files. The amount of Xbox Gold games I got as part of subscription that I never even downloaded is ridiculous. With Stadia of I wanted to try out one of the subscription games, just click Play and you're playing it a few seconds later. And no more worrying about hard drive space.