Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Hard to describe. I felt like Hollow knight(never finished) was only harder than cuphead(actually finished) because the length of the game. Being that cuphead was a much shorter game, it was somewhat manageable. I'd say cuphead was twitchy as well and you had to have nerves of steel along with quick reflexes to finish it. Having said that, I can tell you I'd never go back and play cuphead again but I'd gladly give HK another shot. I also beat zelda 2 the traditional way with no save States and rewinds, but HK just felt like it was on another level for me.

@CactusMan @Dogorilla unexpected answers! But appreciated 😁 i wouldn't have expected either of those games to be remarkably challenging. Thanks for the input.

@NintendoByNature i forgot about Cuphead. I never finished it. Got to the last area and decided that was good enough for me. You make a great point though: Cuphead is brief, but exhausting. I felt like the game was always on you know? I would've liked more of the platforming levels added in to break up the fact that it's a boss rush game that looks and sounds amazing. Hollow Knight probably requires more effort than Cuphead (longer game, more bosses, items to find, yougettheidea) but at least part of that is relatively chill. Also - kudos for the Zelda II. I can't complete most S/NES games without save states (unless I played them a bunch as a kid) so that is quite the accomplishment.

To add to hard games I beat:
-DK Tropical Freeze on hard. It wasnt too bad. Levels are really long though, so not having checkpoints was a bear.
-Shovel Knight on hard. I don't remember much of it actually. I think the hardest part was the boss gauntlet towards the end but other than that it wasnt too spicy.
-possibly the single hardest boss I've beaten in a game was Agent 3 in Splatoon 2. That took an afternoon. I kid you not, i one-shotted Kalameet in Dark Souls but Agent 3 used me like a sponge.

@Losermagnet It's hard to say. I don't think I've really played any of the modern games that most people consider hard (the Souls games, Cuphead), except I guess for Hollow Knight. I remember in Xenoblade Chronicles there were a couple of places that there was no chance I was going to beat until I finally gave up my ideal of always playing as Shulk and changed my controlled character, and then went and grinded for a few levels. But mostly old-school NES games. I could never beat either Zelda when I was a kid, but I finally did when I grew up because you could actually save in those. Blaster Master I could never beat until it came to NSO with save states, or Gradius. And like @Dogorilla said, I could never beat the later levels on the early Monkey Ball games.

Well there you have it, folks!

What are people’s thoughts on the Far Cry 6 discourse? While the game is doing just fine, scoring high 7s to low 8s, many “critics” and “journalists” took it upon themselves to criticise Far Cry 6 for how similar it was to past entries in the series. Something which has seen a lot of backlash, in a lot of different directions.

How much innovation do you want out of a sequel and how much do you want it to stay the same? Is it fair to criticise Far Cry in this way, when countless other games have been iterating on the same formula for decades? Or given there has been a wave of games in recent history which are designed to feel exactly like a game from decades earlier, make a point to have no modern quality of life improvements and are then praised for it.

@Losermagnet yea for sure. The entire game you have to be ready. There's no such thing as a breather. Some of the bosses in that game legit took me a few nights of trying. Quite honestly, I don't have that kind of time anymore. However, in bravely default 2 which I've been playing, I've had to play a couple bosses for a couple nights to finally beat them. But it's nowhere near as hard as the games we've mentioned.

DKC and SK on hard are some good feats. I haven't even tried them since they present a decent challenge already at times. Nice job though dude.

The Zelda II thing was more of my stubborn personality coming out and not wanting to quit. It was pretty tough, but at least it's not a long game.

@Losermagnet Well, whenever I get to it, we shall see.

It's the Ubisoft open world problem generally. They make a lot of games that pretty much play the same way, but have a different skin on them. The Far Cry and Assassin's Creed franchises account for a good chunk of them alone, but they're just the tip of the iceberg. They must have released about sixty in the past decade.

That's fine if you just dabble at the occasional one. Individually they're all decent enough games with plenty of content. You just move on to the next in the series - or sometimes even a different series - and it's very samey.

I'll get that they'll have some fans who just can't get enough of them, and they wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't making them money, but for a company who was at the innovative edge of open world games a decade back, it still seems rather a disappointment that they've gone down this route.

The AC franchise is an interesting wrinkle, because they completely reinvented those games - and the franchise has been better for it, imo - seemingly in response to claims of stagnation. This ushered in a new era of RPG mechanics creeping into almost all of their titles, with varying degrees of success. However, even despite this, there suddenly became a loud shift in complaints to franchises losing their way and needing to go back to their core again. Ubisoft seem like they really can’t win here, either way. Even when they try to publish more unique efforts for their portfolio, to try and create a wider palette outside of their core franchises, those games usually flop. I am not one to defend a corporation, especially one as rotten as Ubisoft, but they must look at every release and think “what the ***** do you want?!”.

Although despite complaints, I think Valhalla is the best selling AC game of all time. So maybe reinvention really is the right approach, despite the cries of players saying otherwise.

@Pizzamorg It’s an excellent question. Is a game no longer good if it does the same things another good game did? It definitely seems like Far Cry 6 is getting penalised by player fatigue.

I have never played a Far Cry game. There’s every chance that Far Cry 6 might be the best game in that series for me.

Ubisoft is kind of a victim of its own success. It has pretty much perfected an open world formula, with a good engine, good visuals, good sound, and doesn’t really know where to go next. Does anyone? What it really needs to do is give everybody a break - staff and players alike - but can’t, because then it’s not making any money and will go under.

Let’s see where Ubisoft is in another couple of years. Maybe it can find a path to use the new generation of consoles in more interesting ways.

I honestly don't want every game ever made to be open world. I noticed it's a common thing ever since BotW for people to want open world games as a big thing, when while they're alright, are nothing special. Not every game series would fit as an open world game, and a lot of things that make a series special would end up being destroyed if the series did end up going open world. I remember for a while, a ton of people would get upset when a big open world game didn't release from Nintendo, like games like Luigi's Mansion, or games like Metroid Dread. Yes, I've seen some people complain about how there's no open world Metroid game.

The reason this is on my mind is probably because of Legends Arceus being confirmed not to be an open world game, in the sense that BotW was, and people's reactions to that news.

@VoidofLight I completely agree. I do have to admit that I was surprised and somewhat disappointed with the news about Pokemon Arceus as I did prefer to see something like that with Pokemon, but I'm still really interested in seeing the final product as I imagine it having a similar structure to Monster Hunter Stories and other similar games and doing a marvelous job.

I honestly think that if developers delivered as many open world games as people ask for most of us would be really tired of them, and just like with any game, we need different formulas and different ways of doing things to have better and more variable gaming options. Let's just allow developers to do what they have in mind as that's usually the road to make a succesful game instead of forcing them to do things that they don't want or sometimes don't even know how to properly do them.

If you've never played a Far Cry game, I'm sure it'd all seem novel enough. Still, you could just go and pick up Far Cry 3 for a song these days and get something that I'm sure is just as good. It's aged fairly gracefully and the DLC - Blood Dragon - is perhaps the greatest example of how a game can be re-skinned into something totally different. Hell, you can get Blood Dragon as a stand alone; just go straight to that.

As for Ubisoft generally, things are looking a lot less dire for them than they were a year ago when they posted huge losses and all the abuse allegations came out. They've turned it around financially with a string of hits - Legion, Valhalla and Immortals all sold well even if some would say that they're basically the same game - and some high profile firings suggest that at least there's some willingness to improve their toxic culture, although obviously far more needs to be done.

Still, those profits give them the cushion they need to make changes in both their management style and their games, so I can only hope that they make good use of it. This is also the company that gave us Mario + Rabbids and Valiant Hearts in recent years; they've still got a lot of talent if they're prepared to harness it.

@roy130390 I feel like the world will be more akin to Monster Hunter Rise than Stories, with the hub area and the segmented big maps. However, yeah I agree. Too many open world games would oversaturate the market, and make them less special over all.

@VoidofLight I agree with this.

The gaming world is going crazy giving 10/10 scores to games that we would've been excited over in the 1990's. What I mean by this is we have a full-priced 2D action game (Metroid Dread) and then Tetris Effect which is also full-priced. Sorry I'm not paying FULL PRICE for Tetris or a 2D side-scroller. I may well be missing out on a good time here and I feel like I'm in the minority but if I wanted to play this style of game I feel like I should go back to my SNES and why bother buying a Switch? OK that's a little bit of an exaggeration but I'm just trying to make a point. Are we really in the year 2021? Does anyone agree with me even partially or am I missing something?

@DiamondJim Metroid Dread isn't a 2D side-scroller. It's a Metroidvania game. It's wild to me that people believe 2D games aren't worth 60 dollars, when there are some amazing games for that price-point, which are better than the garbage you'd get from buying a yearly Fifa entry. People say this every time a game launches that is 2D, where they think it's not worth the price due to the art style alone, instead of judging the game based on the gameplay and content.

You aren't alone in feeling the way you do, since there are many other misguided people with the same opinion on 2D games, but it's a ridiculous point of view.

I really do hate this type of thinking, Just because it doesn't have 3D worlds, or 3d areas, means its not worth 60$ like were the hell did that type of thinking come from? There are so many 2d games, waaaaaaay better then a 60$ 3d game, yet people want to say its not worth it, bc its 2d, I really don't understand.

It has to be said that Metroid Dread is also a little on the short side for a full priced game.

Still, if a reviewer wants to give it 10/10 because they think it's the best ten hours of 2.5D Metroidvania you can get, fair play to them. It's not as if people won't factor the visual style and length of the game into their purchasing choices.

@Matt_Barber Depending on the genre, there are many games (shooters, platformers, metroidvanias) that will last about 8-15 hours so I would say that to me it has an average duration. It does fall short to the average open world or RPG in that regard, but I wouldn't say "for a full priced game" at least in comparison to many games that I have experienced. I do agree with what you are saying aside from that though.