Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@NickWba20 An opinion I would have to agree with. Very much a well crafted game with a story that hits the occasional emotional beat, but I can't say I walked away from it believing it to be the best, or even in the top 10 best gaming experiences I've ever had like some. I can understand why some are in love with it though, and it's definitely not boring. Just not quite up to par with what I would call an amazing game.

For what it's worth I'm looking forward to the sequel but it's not a superb flawless game in my opinion. I enjoyed the likes of Death Stranding, Bloodborne Spiderman and Horizon much more (that's if we only talk about exclusives)

The Last of Us was generic, depressing, and utterly lacking in the sort of fun humor or spectacular set-pieces that make the Uncharted games worth playing. People keep gabbing about it like we weren't already drowning to death in post-apocalyptic and zombie narratives in 2013. Which isn't to say nothing interesting can be done with the genre, but I didn't see that with TLOU.

@Ralizah I've come to agree with this viewpoint. The first game had a profound message and the performances and writing were excellent - all things I respect it for - but on reflection I actually felt quite miserable playing it. And so I have no appetite at all for the sequel. I don't think it will have anything new to say and it appears violent for the sake of it and to the point of being repugnant. Now that the world is in quite a terrible state it's adding to the feeling that I really don't want to play it because it may actually trigger me. Hopefully Naughty Dog will make something more lighthearted after this!

@KratosMD The gameplay was a decent take on survival horror although I found it quite tricky at times, particularly against human enemies.

I feel more people should try low budget games instead of looking for the big budget games! They can find some really good games!. Underrated gems. My biggest recommendations

@KratosMD Well, the gameplay is... fine? It's a little more dynamic and visceral than the original Uncharted trilogy (although, personally, I preferred Uncharted 4's combat, with its inclusion of rope swinging/punching and limited stealth). Like Uncharted, though, I find it to be a bit shallow. That's fine in Uncharted, because those games are about the spectacle and sense of flow. They don't usually slow down long enough for me to care that the action isn't really varied or strong.

In a game like this with such a slower, exploratory pace, something needs to be added to spice up the gameplay variety, imo. In a classic survival horror game, you'd find environmental puzzles and highly interactive, non-linear environments to fill that role. But this game has incredibly static environments, and, like the first three Uncharted games, the environments aren't terribly exploratory. It seems like the limited number of items that can be used in crafting spiced up the gameplay sufficiently for you, which is great, but it's rudimentary enough that it didn't add much for me.

Combat-wise, there are, imo, way too many sections that devolve into Joel creeping around an environment stealth-killing random raider mooks. The clickers are interesting in theory, but I hated their instakill attacks, and often found them much more annoying than scary.

@mookysam Out of interest, what was the profound message you took away from TLOU?

The writing and performances were indeed, all quite good. And, of course, it was a visually impressive game, both in terms of sheer visual fidelity (TLOU Remastered isn't THAT big of an upgrade, and it still looks like a current gen game) and in terms of the 'direction.' As a heavily cinematic experience, it's probably quite an accomplishment.

I just don't... care about any of that, personally. And the subject matter and story in general were a bit standard for the genre.

As somebody who is still putting off TLOU because it really really doesn’t appeal to me at all, you lot are definitely making me less likely to play it! Zombies are just so overdone and gritty, brown-ish games were ten-a-penny a few years ago and I just generally can’t be bothered.

@Ralizah @KratosMD @mookysam @nessisonett I’m not sure I’d put TLoU on my top 10 as an all time favorite, but to me it was a deeply moving experience. I really like the whole cinematic and narrative driven angle. The gameplay was perfectly adequate and enjoyable, in a survival horror kind of way. It is sort of bleak and lacking in levity when compared to its Uncharted brethren. But more than any of the UC games (all of which I very much adore) it left me pondering the message and reliving the story beats in my mind after I completed it. Even to this day, the weight of the narrative left an impression on my psyche.

Since @nessisonett hasn’t played it I won’t go into detail, but the journey of the characters, their relationships, and the general drama of their situation was pretty impactful. Yeah, the post apocalyptic zombie-like setting is quite a bit overdone, but perhaps part of why I enjoyed it is that I really don’t particularly like that setting; therefore I don’t clamber to play those types of games usually so maybe it resonated with me better since I hadn’t hit ‘zombie saturation’ when I played it and it still seemed fresh to me.

It’s also one of those games that I haven’t particularly felt inclined to play again, so I haven’t played the PS4 Remaster. Maybe that in and of itself is telling — since the best part of it is the story and the ending imo, and you can’t ever experience it again for the first time. I’d rather keep my fond memories of how it left me speechless after the first playthrough.

I did think the multiplayer tack-on “Factions” was over-rated. I actually enjoyed the Uncharted MP modes even though they were also added on at a time when every game had to have some random online component to keep people from selling back their game when they finished it. But Factions felt even more like superfluous fluff even though a lot of people raved about it.

While I’m in the neighborhood, I’ll drop an unpopular opinion —
Telltale games are quite enjoyable. I’m not terribly bothered by the lack of consequences in my choices and certainly games like Detroit Become Human and Life is Strange have done the narrative choice-and-consequence style better, but nearly every TT game has been a decent outing for me personally.

I say this as I have completed the 3rd episode of Batman The Enemy Within last night.

@KratosMD Yeah, I haven’t played one for a long while and booting up The Enemy Within I’ve been overall pleased with how it looks and plays. The gameplay is paper thin with just simple QTE’s, the Riddler puzzles are extremely basic, and the narrative choices are often scripted to be a manipulative no-win situation, but I really enjoy the story. And the visuals have a great “comic book” feel to them. I did have a pretty bad glitch at one part of episode 2 where the on screen visuals all but disappeared for about 3 minutes while the dialog (including the choices) continued unabated in the background. That was weird. But as soon as the scene was over it was back to functioning again.

I think it’s all about going in with appropriate expectations. I’m not looking for a Dark Souls level of gameplay when I boot up a Telltale game; I just want to turn my mind off and be told a story. And for that they work pretty well, imo. I think the hate stems from the fact that people expect some innovation or increased complexity, but they all essentially play the same. I’ve grown to expect that’s what they will be and so it’s fine.

I think the reaction to Telltale games changing was a variety of things:

• Dilution of quality - Telltale started really, really strong out of the gate with The Walking Dead Season One, but, over the years, they started taking on one way too much licensed stuff, and many of their projects as a result ended up dipping in quality in the eyes of many fans. A classic case of a developer going bigger than they could handle.
• Oversaturation - Telltale also released too many of these games in quick succession. Reminds me, in a way, of what happened with the Star Wars license under Disney, where the films stopped being events due to how quickly they were cranking the films out.
• The format - I think people have started to grow increasingly suspicious of the episodic format that these games popularized over the years.
• The emptiness of moral choices in their games - Telltale brought back the idea of moral choice in games in a big way, imo, with the tense, decision-filled gameplay of their Walking Dead series, but it became clear to people that the apparent autonomy they had within the context of the narrative in these games was largely illusory. Your choices didn't actually matter when it came to the broader direction of the games, and I think, like with Mass Effect 3, many gamers didn't enjoy the sense that their choices were irrelevant to the broader evolution of the narrative.
• The novelty faded - When TWD S1 first released, adventure games were a dying/nearly dead form of the genre (the only other notable one I can think of that released before it was David Cage's Heavy Rain, which was a PS3 exclusive), and Telltale's output seemed excited. But since then, other companies with more clout and resources have been developing games like this, and Telltale failed to evolve to compete with these more sophisticated efforts. Although it's not really the same, it reminds me of the quick rise and fall of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, where suspicion of the format and adoption of it by bigger players like Epic left the trailblazing indie developer that started it all in the dust. In Telltale's case, it was a much slower fade to irrelevance.

@KratosMD
I think there are some entertaining Telltale games, I liked them as they are story focused and my wife could enjoy them with me.

My main issue with them is their illusion of player choice. There are too many occasions where you make a choice and it's far too obvious it made no difference to the outcome at all. I think they did improve on that a bit in some of their later games though.

@Arugula Surprised that Borderlands was the one you didn’t like, as it was one of the stronger ones in most people’s opinion. (Unpopular Opinion alert!) My least favorite was probably Back to the Future, but it is such an old game it really shows its age. It has the most complex puzzles and gameplay of any I’ve played though.

I actually loved Back to the Future, it was the first one I played and it was on my old phone years ago. My favourites are the Sam & Max games though, still a shame you can’t play them on current consoles.

The puzzles were definitely trickier in Back to the Future and they certainly streamlined the gameplay so there isn't really much to work out. I enjoyed most of Telltales games with the First Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us and Borderlands my personal favourites. Youtube channel NoClip has a really interesting documentary on the downfall of Telltale games told by ex-employees. It gives insight into how it was mismanaged and how they fell apart just as sounds like they may have been turning a corner creatively.

@Ralizah I felt it was both an impactful exploration of loss and grief and a morality tale on the terrible things people may be driven to in order to protect someone they love. I suppose in some ways it also pits utilitarianism against the narrow interests of the self.
The ending subverts player expectations. We're used to playing the "good guy who saves the world", yet here Joel destroys humanity's chance to cure the plague because he can't bear to lose Ellie. He's a broken man and she's a surrogate for the daughter he so tragically loses in the game's prologue. It's not necessarily easy for the player to condemn a role they've inhabited for 20 hours and become emotionally invested in, particularly given the attachment to Ellie, yet Joel's actions nevertheless cause a very strong feeling of unease.

@Th3solution It was moving and provoked quite a strong emotional response. The ending and a certain scene midway stayed with me for days, but it's because of that I don't want to play it again and am not interested in the sequel. It was an overwhelmingly depressing and negative experience. I recognise the good things about the game, but would say that over the years my thoughts have hardened into not really liking it.

On Telltale games, I like the few I've played or watch others play as they're undemanding and generally nice to play through.

Red Dead 2 is a better experience when you haven’t played the first game - specifically the epilogue. It was seeing my mum finish the game that made me feel this way, to her it was an accomplishment to see John finally get the life Arthur wanted for him. Obviously to us that have played the first game, it’s hard to feel that great about this when we know how it ends. She’s wanting to play the first game now but honestly, I think it ends at a really nice place and playing the first game would just leave her feeling empty.

@nessisonett I can totally understand that. Of course having played RDR 1 I feel that makes the epilogue even more enjoyable for me. Now the story is finished I get to potter around the old west as John and have his family home to go back to every now and then.
That's why i think that while RDR2 is technically and mechanically a superior game to the original I actually prefer the story of RDR and enjoyed playing as John more. Through the original John is already a redeemed person whose trying to do right by people but his past rightly or wrongly catches up with him.

I suppose you could tell your mum to only play the missions up until he gets his family back and leave the last couple of missions undone to not sully the prequel. But I get that could be odd.

You should play the best game in the series 1st without worrying about spoilers or backstory.

@Arugula i mean sometimes they make sense but most of the time they don't and just feel like padding BUT on the flip side if the combat mechanics are fun then it doesn't bother me much