Unpopular Gaming Opinions

General and high profile video game topics.
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LoganRuckman
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Joined: April 10th, 2015, 1:04 am

Re: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Postby LoganRuckman » December 31st, 2019, 3:57 am

Resurrecting one of my old threads, it truly baffles me just how much love Super Mario Kart still receives. I mean, it's a decent game, but come on, it is by far the absolute weakest entry in the series. Literally every Mario Kart game that came after improved the formula in so many ways and in general are far better experiences. Mario Kart 64 isn't even close to being the best in the series, but it's still a quantum leap from the original.

Super Mario Kart has ridiculously loose, slippery controls that make it feel like you're driving on ice, and the drifting is really touchy. It has some truly awful rubber band AI, not to mention the fact that the CPUs get special abilities you don't have access to. You can barely see five feet in front of you. Only a measly two players can participate. The split screen track/map setup is awkward. And the tracks are all really flat and bland. The game is fine and I understand its importance in gaming history, but nowadays it's just mediocre and has kinda aged like milk. I would rather play literally any other Mario Kart game. Any time someone says that it's still the best in the series, I automatically assume that person is an inhuman monster who needs to be isolated from society. When it comes to the most overrated Nintendo games ever or even the most overrated games in general, SMK is a strong contender.

This Scott The Woz video pretty much sums up my feelings on the game: https://youtu.be/-vsOcLG_X9g

CaptainCruch
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Joined: July 17th, 2015, 11:26 am

Re: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Postby CaptainCruch » December 31st, 2019, 4:50 am

I think the original 'Strider' on the Sega Genesis is horrible and I do not understand the praise. It's choppy, has tons of slow-downs, average music, average animation, sloppy controls, bad hit detection, annoying floaty jumps and uninteresting level design. Why does everyone seems to love this game so much?

jon
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Re: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Postby jon » December 31st, 2019, 10:18 am

I also think Super Mario Kart stinks. When playing 1 player you have to do it on half a screen because the other half it taken up by the map. It's a terrible experience because half the screen is taken up. On top of that, the rubber band AI is infuriating. The game sucks

evergreen13
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Re: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Postby evergreen13 » December 31st, 2019, 11:08 am

I actually enjoy rubberband AI in racing games. It keeps me engaged in the game. If I get too much of a lead, there's no challenge. If I mess up and crash, I want to still have a chance to comeback.

On a different note, I really don't care whatsoever for character customization. It's like going to a salad bar; sure, I can toss in all the items I want and it will be alright, but honestly I'd rather have a chef create a salad with a specific flavor profile in mind. Because of this, I also honestly have no issues with a game wants to offer cosmetics in loot boxes. Sure, some look cool, but that's about it. If other people want to throw away their money at pointless crap then more power to you. I draw the line when they start impacting gameplay.

I also tend to avoid the current "zeitgeist" games. I don't care about what the hit game is today. If it is actually worth playing it will still be worth playing in five years. Not that I wait to buy games until after they've been out for five years, but I do try to avoid the hype train.

Voor
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Re: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Postby Voor » December 31st, 2019, 2:59 pm

^^^^agreed. I’ve played racing games I was good at without rubberbanding, and it just gets boring. I really like MK Wii, partly because the AI is relentless.

I too dislike customization—the old Mario Karts let your choose between heavy, medium, and light, each with pros and cons, and that was enough. I don’t need to pick out wheels, car model, etc.

But apparently people love that stuff. All the customized players you can build in sports games, custom costumes in Fortnite, etc. people go nuts over it, and even pay money to do it.

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C64_Critic
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Re: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Postby C64_Critic » January 2nd, 2020, 12:27 am

"Wii Sports is just a tech demo".

I remember playing Wii sports back when the Wii was new and everyone was gushing about the motion controls. The pack-in, which from what I remember consisted of a bowling game, a golf game, a boxing game, and a (3-inning) baseball game, is held up as one of the most popular 'video games' of all time. I recall finding the motion controls interesting, but FAR from exacting and that standard controllers would be better still as far as accuracy and precision were concerned.

At no point have I changed my opinion. At best, the Wii motion controls would accurately mimic what you were trying to do maybe 80% of the time, but far often it was even less - I vaguely recall playing the boxing game and thinking that it wasn't even getting HALF of my movements correct.

I still think of Wii Sports as nothing more than a pack-in demo disk to show the 'potential' of motion control, and that nothing on the disk was even remotely Earth shattering. Yet I still hear people speak of Wii Sports as the biggest gaming innovation of the entire 2000's.

Buttermancan
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Re: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Postby Buttermancan » January 2nd, 2020, 6:04 am

For all it's faults such as rough graphics, dodgy hit detection etc I think COD Black Ops 1 is the best in the entire series!

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DrLitch
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Re: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Postby DrLitch » January 2nd, 2020, 8:04 pm

Mario Kart SNES is one of those titles you have to play at the time as a kid. Through the lens of today those nostalgic glasses have to be the proverbial beer goggles.

CaptainCruch wrote:I think the original 'Strider' ..... Why does everyone seems to love this game so much?


Agreed. The fact the character grunts everytime he swings his stupid sword means I have to play this game with volume turned right down. I never did play the Genesis original though but the arcade game is enough for me to never want to try it on the Genesis.

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Stalvern
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Re: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Postby Stalvern » January 2nd, 2020, 8:55 pm

DrLitch wrote:I never did play the Genesis original though but the arcade game is enough for me to never want to try it on the Genesis.

The arcade game is the original.

TheEagleXIII
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Re: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Postby TheEagleXIII » January 3rd, 2020, 7:27 pm

Not only was GTA IV boring and repetitive, but it would have been a much better game with Roman as the main/playable character.

I can see why GTA IV got 10s across the board when it came out. Rockstar do a great job creating living, breathing cities populated with tons of little details, things to do and it had amazing graphics to boot – which deserved praise. But it should have lost points for the repetitive gameplay and the story. I tried not to compare it to San Andreas, but I wasn't a fan of them abandoning the more fun visuals of previous games for the realistic look, plus the game felt smaller, less ambitious, had fewer features and had less character customisation. Even putting that to one side and judging it on its own merits, I still couldn't get engaged in the game.

Nico, his story, and his motivations are just so boring and pretty much non-existent. He flip flops between being written as an affable, innocent victim of circumstance, reluctantly doing what he has to do to survive and attempting to break free from the cruel environment he grew up in so he can start fresh in a new country, to a remorseless, emotionless killer for hire with no conscience or desire to leave that life behind him. His story of revenge takes a backseat for almost the entire game and merely just bookends it. His only motivation is money. He does everything for the money and has zero opinions on the jobs he does for money. He doesn't grow, change or learn anything. He just meets new people he has no chemistry with, suddenly cares about them and then does whatever they ask him to do. Nico is just a minor character in everybody else's story, instead of being the main character of his. He has no stakes or conflict in anything he does, except for a few bits with Roman early on. When I gotta drive across the map 50 times doing and accepting missions, I wanna feel like there's purpose to it. You could get away with it in GTA 1 - 3 and even Driver, but games had come a long way since then.

I know the point of the story is a commentary on the American Dream... so why not switch it up and make Roman the main character? Sure, even without the constant calls to go bowling, he was annoying. But at least he had a personality, morals, dreams, ambitions and room for character development – put him in Nico's shoes and he wouldn't be that same guy by the time the game's finished.


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