I used to fucking love Tracer. The holiday comic came out and I absolutely adored her, and poked fun at my own gf for having the same name as hers. But then I heard the lines she has for Sombra and pretty much dropped her on the spot. They just felt so unnecessarily mean-spirited. “Oh but she stole tech from Winston.” Widowmaker shot one of her idols DEAD. And she’s less pissed at Widowmaker than she is Sombra. Sombra just needles her about feeling woozy from the translocator, a smartass being a smartass, y’know? And then Tracer says “Won’t be a problem if you just disappeared forever.” That’s not only horrifying, but also callous because Tracer knows exactly what that feels like. It also makes me pretty uncomfortable considering Sombra’s race and recent events.
It just feels so out of character considering everything else about her. It’s so rude and mean and way harsher than any other character she talks about.
A ot of my affection for Syndicate is probably based on how cosily Victorian it is, and how much I needed that comfort at the time I played it. Also the Dreadful Crimes are awesome.
I… I thoroughly enjoy Perfect Dark Zero. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a bad game. But I enjoyed what it tried to be. I spent more time than I care to admit playing it multiplayer (first the demo, then the full game). I had a silent friendship with this one person where we played the coop campaign online on the hardest difficulty. I was no good, but they never gave me shit, never said anything really iirc, neither did I. And the multiplayer and gunplay was so goofy and bad and wonderful and the RCP was permabanned because it was too good so I was sad because it was my favorite gun. You feel like you’re running through molasses and the frame rate is garbage and everything is so SHINY and I love my sweet bad PDZ son.
Cool, missed this initially. Glad I read through all the posts though, 'cause:
Melee isn’t good. I say that as someone who unequivocally loves every Smash game now and forever and could play them at any time and they would be one of my favourite games of the year, but Melee is actually not great. Having spent about 18 months around competitive Smash players now, I’ve figured out that Smash 64 requires far more technical skill and Smash 4 requires far more mental skill. Melee is for people who want to destroy their hands hitting lots of buttons on a controller to move around the stage in a way that looks impressive but can’t actually play traditional fighting game neutral. It’s a broken game that can only be played the way it is — more aggressively than any fighting game in existence can — because of glitches that Melee players to this day don’t actually understand the reasoning for not including in subsequent releases.
Anyway, FF13-2 is much, much better than FF13, Metal Gear Solid 1 is bad to play and the dialogue in the cutscenes is a terrible reward for completing gameplay sections, Star Fox Zero is a fine game that stands almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Lylat Wars, Spirit Tracks is a fantastic Zelda game, and I’m about 2000% over Binding of Isaac, Ed McMillen’s games, and, in general, all games that substitute jokes with “the existence of poop”.
We’ve gotten away from that these days, but it makes me so uninterested in stuff like Castle Crashers, as it locks the screen to focus on yet another animal spraying feces for a few seconds before moving on. BoI just seems adamant on revelling in that age of indie games. The fact that it’s just got a bunch of really bad design decisions in it and the remake has a pixelly art style that has no reason to be there and actually removes personality from the game doesn’t help.
Binding of Isaac’s aesthetic of “oh man, poop!” combined with “oh man, religion!” without any meaningful commentary on either really turns me off.
As a person with an interest in world religions, any game (or piece of media for that matter) that just uses religious elements as set dressing rather than actually attempt to explore it (cough cough Neon Genesis Evangelion) really bothers me,
I’ve never been able to put words to why professional Melee bothers me other than it’s stupid fast, looks janky as fuck, and do people really still enjoy watching Fox and Falco shine each other all over Battlefield anymore? Like, they’ve been doing that for ten years. I don’t know what the professional Smash 4 scene looks like, but to me, as long as it’s not an endless cycle of Fox and Falco with the occasional Peach shining each other into infinity, it’s gotta be better than that. (I mean, unless now it’s an endless cycle of Clouds, Bayonettas, and Diddys.)
As for unpopular opinion, having finally played through all three Dark Souls games…all three are very good games and worth playing. Nope, not even a caveat for 2 or 3 or worshiping 1 as the best one, they’re all good games.
I mean Smash 4 is the most balanced of the series, so while the top tiers are certainly the best and you can usually count on certain characters winning a tournament, that’s usually because the people playing them are really good, the age old cycle of players who really want to win picking characters for their viability first and foremost, so those characters are the ones who do better and get more representation. Somewhere like Japan or Australia has a much more diverse character roster in the top 40 player rankings.
Stuff like that, as well as a 16:9 HD resolution, is why Smash 4 is just infinitely more palatable as a spectator event, and why it’s got the Sunday slot at Evo this year over Melee. The top 8 for any Melee major or national is practically set in stone, and you could probably make side bets on even the stock counts in a set by this point. In Smash 4, you never know what character might appear at any point in the bracket, either from a relatively unknown player or a top player picking a surprise character out of nowhere.
This goes doubly (aha) for doubles, since, again, an immensely balanced cast of almost 60 characters means there are basically endless possibilities for team combinations. Which get summarily ignored in favour of every team consisting of Cloud and whoever the other person mains.
Smash 4 is so much better to watch and more rewarding to play when a sequence all comes together because it’s based on more than just a single read of the opponent, yet even Smash 4 players will constantly bend over backwards to heap praise upon Melee while Melee players literally never stop whining, completely unprompted, about how you can’t dash dance and “there aren’t any combos”.
Melee players are commonly too dense to realise what’s good for them anyway, though (evidenced by more than one player having to retire from competitive play because they’ve destroyed their hands), so it’s to be expected.
Hey here are another two opinions: Goldeneye has aged terribly terribly terribly and the Super Nintendo Starfox is a garbage game and its only redeeming qualities are the more bizarre warp zone sequences and that it laid the groundwork for Lylat Wars.
I just thought of an opinion of mine that might be considered bad, or I at least admit over generalizing. 2d sidescrolling arcade-style (sometimes just arcade) beat em ups; like Double Dragon, Fatal Fury, Streets of Rage, or TMNT4:Turtles in Time; all play almost exactly the same and all are boring as fuck. Whenever I hear someone talk about character action games like Devil May Cry, God Hand, or even Dynasty Warriors-type games like they’re the “exact same”; I can’t help but think “do you remember those games?” They were actually just bull shit games that exist to rob you at an arcade, or if you own the game then you’re just going through with basically god mode since you have infinite lives anyway.
Hey everybody, if we could not tell people that their opinions aren’t unpopular, I would appreciate it. I know that it’s only been good natured jokes so far, but I do worry about people forcing newcomers out by saying that their opinions don’t belong in the thread. Thanks!
There’s still room for surprises in Melee; about a year ago a guy moved from japan to the east coast for a few months, he went by aMSa and he had this brutal, insane Yoshi that was just hilarious to watch. I’m definitely glad 4 managed to put emphasis on strategy, though; that’s what I liked in fights.
Bioshock Infinite (at least looking at gameplay) is the best Bioshock. A big issue I had with the first one is that Sanctuary was completely underwater yet the gameplay never really interacted with it at all? 2 did a little bit, but not nearly enough to really consider it. The skyhooks were kinda dumb yeah but I loved being able to jump around and do a bunch of impractical yet entertainingly silly tricks using them. It actually felt like I was in the sky roaming around instead of the water just… being there, I guess. Also Elizabeth was a pretty alright AI partner, made looting more efficient at least.
The game is almost fun enough to overlook its garbage “lmao the truth is somewhere in the middle blows raspberry” plot. Almost.
I actually liked Jak 2 and 3. Sure they were pretty edgy, and they had some parts that just should not have been there because it was bad game design, but I liked the concept of them and I liked playing them. I also really liked the footstep noises in them. It’s a weird thing, but I’ve always enjoyed it when footstep sounds had impact to them. I have ever since I was a kid. And the Jak 2 footstep noise while walking around the city is one I distinctly remember for some reason.
Jak 2’s main problems are 2-3 missions and bad checkpoints that don’t save your ammo. I never personally thought the edge part was a big thing, since it’s at the beginning of 2 and it’s shown that thinking that way is stupid.
Despite buying it on two platforms I think I’ve come to realise that I hate Shovel Knight. I just don’t find it very fun to play. I hope that Yacht Club moves on and makes a proper new game some time because I do like their presentation and style.
Oh yeah, on this topic I liked vanilla Shovel Knight but I hated Plague of Shadows. I felt like Shovel Knight was a smooth game where everything was built around Shovel Knight’s toolkit, and then in PoS it’s the (mostly) same levels but with Plague Knight’s drastically different playstyle and his knockback distance that rivals small countries. Plus I just could not get into the whole bomb thing where you had different throws and different explosions… it was too much to manage for a 2D platformer.
Specter of Torment looks promising though, and especially with it coming free with the base game I’ll be trying that out. Hope I enjoy it as much as Shovel Knight.
I also really enjoyed DotNW! It was extremely cheesy, but I’ve always thought the original Symphonia’s story was silly and hard to take seriously (in a fun way) too. The original cast’s involvement was a bit half-assed, but as its own story I thought it was fine, and the battle system was a step up from Abyss. I actually liked all of the new characters!
Going off that… I like DotNW more than Vesperia. It’s actually above Abyss, Zestiria and Vesperia on my personal list, but Zestiria is pretty universally disliked and I’ve seen more mixed opinions of Abyss in recent years. Among western fans Vesperia is one of the games I see praised the most, and Yuri is so popular he’s the second character to have “retired” from the Japanese favorite polls because he kept topping them… And that’s my problem, I don’t really like Yuri as a character. I don’t hate him, but I thought the murder stuff came out of nowhere with no buildup and it was never properly addressed afterwards, it really ruined his character for me. I think the gameplay is okay, and I like Estelle a lot, but it kinda sours the whole thing for me because Yuri is almost like a parental figure for Estelle (and Karol) the whole game despite the questionable stuff he’s done and never been called out for.
One more JRPG opinion… I really dislike Xenoblade. I borrowed it from a classmate and played the first 7 hours, and I enjoyed it enough to decide to buy it myself instead. It was immediately after that that the game started to overstay its welcome… And then it kept going for 70 more hours. The gameplay never really evolved, I thought the plot was meandering at best and just stereotypical in the most tired ways at worst. I guess it’s partly my own fault for having this personal policy of not buying any new games before I’ve beaten the most recent one I got, but I tried my best to rush through the thing, and it just kept going, and going, and going, and it was the most draining video game experience I’ve ever had. I really liked parts of the soundtrack, the robot designs, and the british localization, but it just sucked it all out of me and I never want to touch that game ever again.
Phew! That’s all I had, thank you video game therapy thread.
That’s all I had, thank you video game therapy thread.