Unpopular Gaming Opinions

[NeoCracker]

Dark Souls may be one of the most Aesthetically beautiful games I have ever seen. There is not a single enviroment in that game I would even rate as low as above average.

I dig for examples in a game like Skryim to find a great looking enviroment or area (The only three being the underground Snow Forest, the Underdark area, and Markarth) and yet none of those compares with any of the areas of Dark Souls.

[Quindiana Jones]

Aye to both. Have you seen EpicNameBro's Lore videos. He's not too annoying a narrator, and he has a huge network of people helping him compile all this stuff. It's brilliant.

For me, Skyrim was one of the few games like Dark Souls that was just amazingly beautiful. However, unlike Dark Souls, I had to stop and make time for the scenery. There are always quests and quick travel getting in the way of atmosphere, whereas in Dark Souls the scenery is one of the main characters - hell, one of the most important main characters! The Ash Forest was well worth suffering through Blighttown for.

[Del Murder]

Wolf wins the thread. His opinions are very unpopular.

• FFVI and VII are great games, but they are both largely overrated.

I'll give you a little overrated, even if I don't agree. But why largely?

• The only thing the PSP has going for it is the ability to play PS1 games off it's memory stick, other than that it's an overpriced paper weight.

BBS? Tactics Ogre? An improved FFT? The aforementioned Peace Walker? God of War games? Those are some things the PSP has going for it.

• The Sega Saturn was a great system.

lol

• Super Mario Galaxy is overrated, and hardly one of the best Mario games

Mario has some great games, so I'm not going to argue with that. But I do think SMG is the evlolution of SM64 which is one of the best Mario games. So that's something. It's tough to knock your pants off twice with 3D Mario. SM64 was such a pioneer for 3D platforming that the other 3D Mario games, though good, live in its shadow.

• All 3D fighting games are terrible.

So Dissidia is terrible? Then why'd you play it so much?

• Gaming journalism is terrible and largely could be written by anyone with an opinion regardless if it's right or wrong (I should join in *ZING*)

You mean like all journalism?

[Pete for President]

Aye to both. Have you seen EpicNameBro's Lore videos. He's not too annoying a narrator, and he has a huge network of people helping him compile all this stuff. It's brilliant.

For me, Skyrim was one of the few games like Dark Souls that was just amazingly beautiful. However, unlike Dark Souls, I had to stop and make time for the scenery. There are always quests and quick travel getting in the way of atmosphere, whereas in Dark Souls the scenery is one of the main characters - hell, one of the most important main characters! The Ash Forest was well worth suffering through Blighttown for.

That is true. One of the strongest aspects of the environments in Dark Souls is that every area is relevant. Every prop is placed with utmost care, every treasure carefully balanced and every area has an ultimate, clearly recognizable goal. Just thinking about it makes me want to start my 9th or 10th character :0

[milliegoesbeep]

The Suikoden series is seriously underrated and are fantastic games.

Alundra kicked ass.

There is no point in shooter type games; sometimes I feel like i'm the only one who thinks these games need not exist.

FFVII sucked, I am convinced the only reason why people bum off of it is because AC was made. Now everyone is swooning over it when in actual fact, the storyline is loose and needs work, the relationships between characters needs tweeking and the MC leaves something to be desired.

I think XIII kicks butt.

[Skyblade]

• The only thing the PSP has going for it is the ability to play PS1 games off it's memory stick, other than that it's an overpriced paper weight.

BBS? Tactics Ogre? An improved FFT? The aforementioned Peace Walker? God of War games? Those are some things the PSP has going for it.

Notice that "an improved FFT" is another PS1 game...

Well let's see...

• Motion Controls are not a bad thing for gaming. It's still in it's infancy but it has a more plausible future than some other new game mechanics (see above)
• Apparently I need to say this but Assassin's Creed Revelations is the best entry in the series. It's plot is more refined and focused, it has better level design, it's less buggy than the other entries, bombs add a lot to the game mechanics, the Desmond puzzles were actually real fun and creative, it made the Brotherhood feel more important to the gameplay as opposed to a gimmick in AC:Brotherhood, and the less Desmond the better. Yes the tower defense was awful but the game thankfully had the foresight to make it optional.
• Merging MMO game design with solo RPG design is a terrible idea.
• Modern game design has made gamers pansy's and this is partly why games are not as good as they used to be.

Yes, they are.

It may be better than the other two, depending on your view of the story, but that doesn't make it more than a glorified expansion pack.

And yet you liked FFXII.

Yay to Dark Souls and XCOM.

[Del Murder]

• The only thing the PSP has going for it is the ability to play PS1 games off it's memory stick, other than that it's an overpriced paper weight.

BBS? Tactics Ogre? An improved FFT? The aforementioned Peace Walker? God of War games? Those are some things the PSP has going for it.

Notice that "an improved FFT" is another PS1 game...

So is Tactics Ogre. But you can only get that version of FFT on the PSP, and it's the best version.

[Slothy]

And the PS3 also really highlights why you're wrong. There are PS3 exclusives that have filled up the single layer Blu Ray, and needed to go over into a double-layered Blu Ray. There are a few games that have filled up the dual-layered. 50 Gigabytes. And games are getting larger.

Here's the thing though Bolivar, using games delivered on Blu-Ray's with absolutely no file compression is a poor point of comparison because it's a pretty poor way to transfer files. Even lossless data compression can offer significant savings in file size for downloads. Moreover, even if companies were to use some lossy compression methods, I honestly doubt that anyone but a recording engineer or the like would notice once it's all playing onscreen and over surround sound. Most people simply can't tell the difference, as evidenced by the 360's undeniable popularity. Hell, most people don't seem to notice that most games on both consoles have to be upscaled to true HD resolutions, so the idea that people actually need uncompressed data for maximum quality strikes me as a bit silly. You're not really getting it anyway to begin with.

Moreover, many current gen games run just fine and look and sound better than their console counterparts on PC. But the largest games I own on PC according to their Steam file size are Batman: Arkham City and The Witcher 2 at roughly 10GB and 22GB respectively. And to call them outliers would be understating it. Aside from those, I don't own much that tops 5-6 GB. File sizes simply haven't increased that much on average since the days of DVD's being the biggest storage media available.

I simply cannot believe that we will come to a future where users will be content to download a 60, 70, 80GB file in order to get a game, and then delete and redownload it. Not with every major internet provider having monthly download caps. Not with net neutrality a pipe dream. And certainly not in the low-income neighborhoods of Philadelphia, which is my local Gamestop's bread and butter.

Like I said, give it time and see what shakes out. Some of it depends on companies getting some real competition in the market, and there are entire political and economic issues which stand in the way of it, but if we're going to sit and ponder over whether technology will continue to get faster, more powerful, and cheaper, I'm going to side with history and bet on all of the happening inevitably.

How many decades will I have to wait before all these factors are neutralized and this "inevitability" happens?

I'm not sure why you think it would take decades to get there for the average customer, or even lower income customers. Hell, 10 years ago, for what I'm paying for internet now I would have had a connection that would get me, maybe 100-150kb/s, with or without a cap depending on the company. Right now, I get between 2-3Mb/s depending on the connection at the other end with no cap. And I don't pay some ridiculous amount either. And with may traditional telecomm services like TV and phones migrating online, it's not unrealistic to think that any low income family that can afford a console or computer could pay for that instead of TV and phone service.

Anyway, the point being that in the last ten years, my service has improved by what? A factor of 20-30. And I'm not paying anymore than I did then? The increase in file size for games by comparison is a not insubstantial amount smaller.

Again, if we're going to take bets on whether technology is going to get exponentially faster, cheaper, and more powerful, I can't think of any reason why I would bet against what has been undeniably true historically.

[Skyblade]

• The only thing the PSP has going for it is the ability to play PS1 games off it's memory stick, other than that it's an overpriced paper weight.

BBS? Tactics Ogre? An improved FFT? The aforementioned Peace Walker? God of War games? Those are some things the PSP has going for it.

Notice that "an improved FFT" is another PS1 game...

So is Tactics Ogre. But you can only get that version of FFT on the PSP, and it's the best version.

I haven't played the PSP Tactics Ogre, so I wasn't sure if it was a new game or the old one rereleased.

The fact that 2 of your 5 games are PS1 titles kind of prove's Wolf's point, in my opinion. Sure, some of those, heck, a lot of those are enhanced. But they're still remakes.

Wolf felt Peace Walker was redundant, so that's unlikely to win him over anyway...

[NeoCracker]

While I'm not as down on PSP as Wolf (Though this system itself is pretty crap considering it's library, a very small number of bitchin' games asside) A modded PSP is really the way to go. If it wasn't moddable, I'd never have picked one up.

[Wolf Kanno]

Wolf wins the thread. His opinions are very unpopular.

To be honest I didn't even list one opinion cause I really didn't want to get into that discussion. I'm happy I won though.

I'll give you a little overrated, even if I don't agree. But why largely?

Saying a game is great is one thing, treating it like it was the video game version of the singularity is another. Both games are great and objectively I feel they are on equal standing in overall design but the fanboys in us all pretty much blind us to that. Even then I feel progress has marched on and there are better games in terms of design and storytelling and while both entries have aged pretty well, I still feel they both show their age and have elements that wouldn't slide in today's market.

BBS? Tactics Ogre? An improved FFT? The aforementioned Peace Walker? God of War games? Those are some things the PSP has going for it.

I never liked God of War and while I will count BBS and Peace Walker as great games there isn't much left in terms of original content for the system that stands out for me. I don't count ports, even if they are spruced up. My issue with the PSP is that most of my games for it are ports or PS1 games. I don't own very many original PSP games cause it lacks a strong library of original content. I have a similar issue with the GBA. Even the few original games on it that I like, I can't help but feel like they would have been better on a console and often feel they were meant for console originally but shoe horned into the PSP cause Sony was desperate for some original game content. It's not a bad system, but it fails to really live up to its potential and doesn't really offer much I couldn't get anywhere else besides being a portable emulator.

Mario has some great games, so I'm not going to argue with that. But I do think SMG is the evlolution of SM64 which is one of the best Mario games. So that's something. It's tough to knock your pants off twice with 3D Mario. SM64 was such a pioneer for 3D platforming that the other 3D Mario games, though good, live in its shadow.

You know, I never really played Mario 64 cause I never owned a N64 and kind of felt it was a crummy system. So I don't really have the nostalgia vibe for 3D Mario so Mario Galaxy was my first foray into Mario's jump to 3D. If Glaxy is the best successor to that title, I have a feeling I just don't care for 3D Mario games.

So Dissidia is terrible? Then why'd you play it so much?

I don't consider it a real fighting game, much like how I don't consider Smash Bros. a fighting game either cause mechanically they don't play like traditional fighting games. So it's excused on a technicality. The game also is pretty damn over-simplistic and largely it's the RPG elements that are more important than the actual fighting game elements.

You mean like all journalism?

I'm sure if you found a boring topic that fulfills only a niche group of people you would find some honest journalism cause they don't have to suck up to conflicting interest groups.

[Jiro]

Gaming journalism is terrible and largely could be written by anyone with an opinion regardless if it's right or wrong (I should join in *ZING*)

You mean like all journalism?

I'm sure if you found a boring topic that fulfills only a niche group of people you would find some honest journalism cause they don't have to suck up to conflicting interest groups.

I'm going to murder you both. Clearly the cornerstones of journalism are lost on the both of you. Just because there is an issue that needs to be addressed does not mean you can make blanket statements like this.

[Goldenboko]

Regarding fully downloadedable games only argument going on: It's not going to happen. My current coop is directly dealing with internet providing. That industry is nowhere near ready for that level of load on cable-bandwidth.

[Slothy]

Mario has some great games, so I'm not going to argue with that. But I do think SMG is the evlolution of SM64 which is one of the best Mario games. So that's something. It's tough to knock your pants off twice with 3D Mario. SM64 was such a pioneer for 3D platforming that the other 3D Mario games, though good, live in its shadow.

You know, I never really played Mario 64 cause I never owned a N64 and kind of felt it was a crummy system. So I don't really have the nostalgia vibe for 3D Mario so Mario Galaxy was my first foray into Mario's jump to 3D. If Glaxy is the best successor to that title, I have a feeling I just don't care for 3D Mario games.

Mario Galaxy is only a good successor to Mario 64 if someone considers a game with pretty tiny, linear levels and almost no exploration a good successor to a game which was pretty much the opposite of those things. I don't think it was a good successor at all because Mario 64 was pretty much all about having open levels that you could explore and collect stars in any order you want. Galaxy does far too much hand holding for my liking.

[Del Murder]

That's a reasonable critique and one that I expected, though some of the levels of Galaxy are a bit more open. Other than that I can't really argue. I guess I just prefer a more linear design to platform games.