Just to be clear, I have certainly said the same thing in the past, but I‘ve been thinking and rethinking it a lot lately too. And, oh no, I think because your post made me examine that statement closely again I’m going to write an essay about accessibility and Dark Souls…… in 2020……
@Gaagaagiins#11529 I think I‘ve said elsewhere that DS2 is my favorite of the Fromsoft games and so for some reason that makes me feel inclined to weigh in here. I think I follow the idea about the accessibility argument, because DS2 does give you consumable healing items and it does despawn enemies, and this makes the game more grindable than the others. In fact, it was my first Fromsoft game, and I got through several tough areas by despawning them the first time I played - it takes hours! I don’t actually think the game is any easier than the others, but it is more… I don‘t know… beatable then the others? You can brute force it. The opposite would be Sekiro, a game which you cannot brute force at all and doesn’t even have jolly cooperation or summonable NPCs. That game was incredibly unforgiving and unwelcoming and I cannot imagine coming to that game without a pre-established Fromsoft expertise.
@sabertoothalex#11530 I think you're absolutely right about this and I trust your feelings, because it's hard for me to see it from an outsider's critical perspective. I think my feelings about the game mirror Tim's well - and frankly guys like us are just not going to be reliably objective on this subject. I remember back when it was "cool" to dislike FF7. In fact, I had a fairly prominent internet presence at the time for a 13 year old griping about how FF7 was vastly inferior to both FF6 and FF4. I was edgy. Later I recognized my love for FF7 as well and that led me to a point where Tim's Lost in Translation videos had a significant impact on my actual life. Oh well!
@CidNight#11532 Right. And Sekiro won GOTY last year and yet I DREAD playing it knowing there isn‘t even a way to cheese things. I really don’t to be 10's of hours in and just hit a wall.
@robinhoodie#11533 It is really hard. I don’t know how to sugarcoat it. I beat it after a couple stops and starts. Some of the fights took me several days to beat. The final boss took five nights of legit work to beat. And I didn’t even bother with the two optional post game bosses, which is a first for me
also, it’s a god danged masterpiece.
I just thought of a bombshell: I don‘t like Metroidvanias. They are just tedious and I don’t really like back tracking in 2D sidescrolling games very much. Thinking about this has made me realize I have a ton of hangups with my expectations towards sidescrolling games, I need them to be in a very narrow convention in order to appreciate them. I need think ponder this further.
@Jtwo#11537 I’m not really into them either but loved Hollow Knight, if you haven’t tried that yet.
@Jtwo#11537 So even Super Metroid and Symphony of the Night then? I was recently thinking about how Super Metroid is nice in that you can finish it in a couple of hours while SotN can drag on and on especially in the inverted castle. It something that has lowered my opinion of the game in recent years.
SotN is ok, I do not like 2D Metroid at all. When I was a teenager I bought Metroid Fusion to take on a flight to Australia and it was so laborious. I admit I have not played through the entirety of Super Metroid. I've played some Axiom Verge which I appreciated and I played the Shadow Complex Demo on XBLA when it came out.
It is fully fully possible that I was just scarred for life from Pocket Bomberman on the GBC.
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I don’t like Breath Of The Wild. Some of the visuals are really nice, but a lot of the design/art is unsightly and has a happy meal toy look to it. The weapon degredation mechanic is totally bizarre and obnoxious to me.
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I also strongly dislike Undertale, but feel like I would be hurting peoples feelings by saying so, and this is part of why I don’t like the game
@yeso#11477 In my mind at least, we just became best friends.
@Syzygy#11535 Yes, I think I sort of came to a realization and ended up making some connections and decisions in my own head. If I was misspoke or used inconsistent language, it was probably because I did so in between my own posts. With apologies to @robinhoodie as I think I was half talking to them and half talking to myself.
I think this warrants laying out some arguments and prompting some discussion about this on its own post, which, I hope isn't oversaturating the forum with it, I haven't been around long enough to know if it's old hat.
Beyond Good and Evil is one of the worst game I ever played.
it looked intriguing, but it was super casual, and since so many ppl loved it it really made me realize how much my tastes differ than that of the majority gaming consensus.
at the time I felt ppl just liked it coz they actually beat it, since this was around the time gamers were beginning to build backlogs and suddenly most games don't get completed.
I ended up not really enjoying Moon: Remix RPG Adventure when I played the English translation a few months ago, mostly because there were too many Tim Rogers-isms! Tim is great and I enjoy him on the podcast, but every single line of dialogue felt like it was coming directly out of his mouth, which just felt weird to me. I‘m grateful he translated it and I’m glad I played it, but I was just incapable of enjoying any of the writing. I mean, I have no problem with Tim‘s own personal writing – he’s written some great stuff – but playing his translation felt more like I was getting Tim Rogers‘ description of the game, rather than the game itself. Of course, many would argue that all translation is just some person’s description of the original. I guess the issue is probably just that I‘m too familiar with Tim’s own idiosyncratic speech patterns, so when I see them all over something that, in my mind, should have nothing to do with him, it makes me feel weird. I‘d like to play the game with the original script, but my Japanese is nowhere near good enough to appreciate any literary subtleties it might contain, so if I do play it, it won’t be for a very long time.
@saddleblasters#11571 Heh, yeah I remember Tim specifically saying he tried to stay away from making it sound like himself to some effect, but there was one early character (the one who collects garbage, I forgot his name) who I‘m absolutely positive would’ve evoked Tim Rogers in my mind even If I were totally unaware of his involvement.
(Still had a fantastic time with it!)
Alright well here we go:
_Hollow Knight._ I don't like the limbo-esque art style, I think the bugs look bad and everything's hard to see. I really don't like the inertia-y movement and I REALLY don't like the wait on the attack animations and the lack of precision to just about everything. I also don't like the music and find the level design drab. I truly do not understand why anyone likes this game.
_Souls Games._ I don't like the budget version of a souls game (above), and I don't like the real ones either. I don't like learning lengths of animations for each different weapon. I hate waiting around in an action game and I feel like in those I'm always waiting for something, and the waits are short and are The Thing you have to learn which is somehow more frustrating. I don't like gotchas either and I guess they removed a bunch of those but it's just not for me. I also don't like the kind of compulsion drive that "go back to get some of your old stuff when you die" creates, it's gross to me.
_Platinum Games._ Basically all of them, including the Clover ones. I like the idea of god hand but I sure don't want to have to play it. Most platinum games are "let's see how many animations we can do with a button press" combined with "let's make it easy" to where I kind of wonder what my part is in all this. Do I even need to hit the buttons? what's the point? there are so many combos of moves but I don't need to use them. Bayonetta I stuck with before they Platinumed me to boredom in 90 minutes - that was the longest I lasted in any platinum game until Nier Automata which, while I still don't like the combat, was fine because of everything else going on in it. Anyway: I do not like platinum combat.
_Vanquish._ They want you to figure out where all the enemies are while sliding around and moving them out of your line of sight. The way they want you to play this game is not a way I want to play a game. I find the specificity of it simultaneously frustratingly specific and floppy. I really do not like this game and wrote a bit rebuttal to adam saltzman's big lovefest article he wrote, I wonder if that's still around. (after 2 minutes looking) well, I can't find it but I found this little exchange:
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You wrote: “VANQUISH FAQs offer little to no concrete help in mastering the game, at least partially because VANQUISH is less about finding the path of least resistance, and more about ballet dancing across a chessboard in more-than-real time, while the pieces, and even the chess board itself, linked by visible and comprehensible logic, shift under the player's feet until the dance is over.”
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Interesting because I totally don‘t agree! I found it very less than comprehensible, especially visually, and most stages devolved for me into a hidden object game as I drifted around trying to figure out where I was getting shot from. The only way I could see to getting better at it was memorization, and the mechanics didn’t grab me enough to warrant it. Maybe you have a way bigger TV than I do or something?
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_Smash Bros._ Everyone knows I don't like smash bros but I'll just mention it a little. The movement feels bad, the jumps feel bad, the motions are context sensitive but inconsistent across characters, jumping around off the side feels bad, and most of the characters are nintendo ones :sunglasses face:
_Shenmue._ It's boring!!!!!!!!!!!! It's boring. And everything takes forever. I love the idea of it and I'm glad it exists and I want more of them to exist but it's boring.
_Ikaruga._ Honestly the score mechanic is too involved for me and is the point of the game, and I don't find it engaging enough to try to learn it.
_Mass Effect._ Easy to hate on Mass Effect but I felt so disappointed when I started that game and it was all about fun stuff like diplomacy and quests in a space station and then suddenly it turned into a mediocre shooter. None of the subsequent episodes had a space station so that was pretty much it for me.
_Uncharted._ Shoot the brown people! Eventually they found some caucasians to shoot but it took SEVERAL episodes, and you always save the white person who's in charge of the brown people to show you're not a bad guy. Anyway that's not the thing I don't like, the thing I don't like is the shooting, the dumb head dodges the AI does, and the incredible bait and switch they pull in the first game where you are on a fun exploration platform mission and then it just pops dudes out at you from wherever in this tomb that nobody has been to for X000 years. I played all of them though so mostly I'm talking about my disappointment with where I would like this series to be vs where it is. I liked the ladies one the best so far.
_Braid._ Bad jumps!!!!! Puzzles aren't fun to figure out.
_Untitled Goose Game's music._ I do like the game, I get why tim doesn't but I enjoy it. take that stupid suburban kids! get hecked by a goose. But many people have said the game wouldn't be the same without the plinky plinky piano music and I just hate it and think it'd be better even with a god darned commercial for anti-depressants style ukulele and clapping and whistling soundtrack (among my least favorite things in the universe).
_Zelda Link's awakening._ I only played the switch one and I found it boring and I don't like bombing random walls, I don't like the characters, I just don't enjoy it at all. Gave it the ole college try though.
I said I wasn't gonna do too much nintendo, I'm trying!!!
_The Witcher III._ It is just another of these open world things! There's lots of fetching to do, everyone's mean to each other, the world is dreary, I'm tired of fantasy, and the story is just... dull and boring and extremely standard. The combat has a level of complexity that is probably fun for people who want to figure it out but I was not inspired to and set it to easy after about an hour. I don't know why anyone would choose this over dragon age or skyrim any other game with this setting.
_Final Fantasy VII Remake._ I hate these characters!! I didn't used to, but I sure do now. I find manic pixie dream girl aerith to be one of the most obnoxious characters I've encountered. Tifa isn't much better. the whatsit lady who's all horny for Cloud is EXTREMELY a person I would not hang out with and actually kind of triggered some real bad memories. Cloud is just a mopey nothing jerk. Jive-talkin' Barrett is embarrassing. and all the extra stuff in the middle really feels like fluff, running around town doing errands that ultimately result in another fight. Tim swears the battle system is interesting if you play it a specific way, but I never got to that point, and after 12+ hours of really trying I just couldn't get over not liking the battle or the story. I liked Crisis Core massively more and that was repetitive as heck!!!!
_The Last of Us._ I don't like the murdery dismal vibe but on top of that I cannot listen to the sound the enemies make or I'll tear my hair out. Also I had a terrible play experience with a demo of it but I guess they fixed some of the stuff I didn't like, but... I just don't need to play it, and the last of us II sounds like everything I didn't like, but way more (which sometimes makes me wonder about myself if this is what's popular).
_God of War._ Talking about the first one. Another "why am I here" game where I don't like the movement, everything's too slashy and all over the place, I don't like the weapons, it's too loose when it wants action and too precise when it wants platforming and I just did not like it.
_Persona 5._ My least favorite persona. The characters are bad, the battle system, while better than 4, is still boring (SMT's is MASSIVELY better, especially SMT IV) because elements barely matter instead of being the focus, and difficulty is more about higher hit points than it is about complexity and thinking things through. But mostly, yeah, I don't like the characters, and also it feels the most formulaic of them all. They've all sort of had a formula since 3, so maybe it's just this being the 5th one that makes it stand out, but it feels like they had a spreadsheet labeled "types of characters in Persona" and just went down and checked them all off. Also the menus aren't actually that good they are just animated and at jaunty angles, sorry!!!!!!!!
well guess what, I could go on forever but why not stop now.
It's hard to criticize other devs because none of my games are even approaching perfect. At least I know exactly what's wrong with them though lol
Heck why not do one of those actually:
_Indivisible._ The battle system is overly complicated but not with good reason - why do I have to remember to do an "up down" attack to break a guard? what's the point of it? Why are enemy attacks for perfect guards telegraphed so poorly? There are too many characters and most of them are superfluous and while some of them work together there's nothing in the game to tell you how or why and you just have to experiment. The first 30 minutes have story stuff I'd never want to do if I didn't have to (why the F would the main character take the guy who *killed her dad* as her first party member). Nice art though!!!!
ok bye for now honk
[edit] I added some more heh heh. also APOLOGIES if you like these games, please don't take that as a dismissal of your taste, everyone likes what they like and we all are going into this knowing these are agreed upon as good games so hopefully nobody will feel offended.
@exodus#11576 with the exception of extremely liking the characters in ff7r, i think i agree with all of this. you articulated my dislike of souls games and zeldas far better than i did.
@exodus#11576 They should‘ve given the goose game a title, and that title should’ve been Get Hecked by a Goose.
The Goose is Loose
I do think they grabbed more attention with that untitled moniker though
I saw that a lot of people liked the ffviir characters, and I'm glad they did because it sure would've sucked for the devs if everyone felt how I did, ha ha. I felt like I was playing Garden State the rpg
I've been having a hard time figuring out my answer to this question, only partly because so many of the games I would have mentioned already have been.
I'll add a few more:
Monster Hunter. Yes, I've tried playing with other people. I've tried several entries in the series (including World!). But this game just makes me feel real bad about murdering helpless animals, and the only reward is using the dead animals' body parts to murder bigger and faster animals more efficiently. I want to like the gameplay, because I've heard it likened to Punch Out, and that seems fun in theory, but I don't feel a satisfying sense of collision with any of the weapons. And, hunting around the map for the "monsters" (animals) is tedious. Plus, miss me with those cat-buddies.
RE7, R2make, R3make. This one's simple. They're just too gory. I am scared of guns and the people who use them in real life, so never mind zombies, having to use guns in this game and watching the crazy bloody damage they do is the real horror.
Splatoon. Tried 'em both. Neither of them have a good control scheme. The aesthetic reminds me of being at the mall with children on a sugar high, and the paint splooging sounds are irritating. I'll never forget the day my wife walked in on me playing this game, stared at the screen for a minute, and asked me in a dry monotone, "これ、おもしろい？" (Is this fun/interesting?) That was a much-needed wake-up call, and I love her for it. In fact, that question echoes in my mind whenever I'm only trying to convince myself I'm enjoying a game time, as opposed to actually enjoying it, and it's absolutely improved my game-playing life over the ensuing years.
lol @exodus “limbo-esque art style” which also reminds me, I freakin hated Limbo!!!
Limbo is the equivalent of a high school student performing open mic poetry. It's a bunch of rando shit thrown in there at an attempt to be deep or have meaning, and ppl play it thinking they have some third eye shit and can understand the game's message or something.
I remember some ppl were saying how the developers would refuse to give any interviews trying to explain the story. Of course they wouldn't, the game doesn't have one! Like you got a bot chasing a sister but there's a spider, and ppl are like "oh well this obviously symbolizes the struggles he went through" and I'm like no it doesn't! He's a video game, he's never gone through anything!
the game wasnt fun either lol. Walk left to right, jump on stuff here and there, pull a lever maybe? whatevs.
Killer7: It’d take longer for me to think of something I don’t dislike about this game. It has maybe, with no exaggeration, the worst feeling movement of any video game I’ve ever played. I’m sure I’m wrong but I feel like there are way more people who like the idea of liking this game than those who sincerely enjoy playing it.
_Dragon Quest XI_: It’s like playing a Wikipedia page on Japanese role playing games.
(Don’t tell me that’s what Dragon Quest games are! I’ve played [and enjoyed] other Dragon Quest games)