Any weird/controversial opinions? I’ll start. Before the remake, the best version of Resident Evil 4 was the Wii version. The Wiimote controls old Resi’s tank controls better than any other controller at the time. The PC version had a bunch of little bugs and detractors that the Wii version just doesn’t have.
I’ll extend this by saying that the Wiimote is actually pretty damn good for shooters, and particularly good for accessibility. Not having to cramp up my hands to press buttons is awesome for having arthritis. Aiming with the Wiimote and moving with the nunchuck just feel really natural, you barely have to move your fingers for anything.
I strongly dislike open-world games and prefer denser, hub-world designs. Open-world designs do not immerse me. They feel like busy work.
WoW is overrated.
I don’t like Half-Life, even though I appreciate that it has an important place in gaming history.
Nintendo should have flopped years ago, but so many people shovel out cash for no other reason than ‘it’s Nintendo!’. No, you don’t need every ‘version’ of the Switch or every color of joycon.
The Switch is a disappointment. The hardware is purposely under clocked because of the did a ‘Pro’ that ran at full speed it would really shine a light that in it’s current spec, it’s barely a 720p device. The OS is embarrassingly not done.
Nintendo hates it’s customers. Loves to sue because you emulated a game you can’t buy. Did you make a YouTube video and the games music played, that’s their video now! Here’s a crappy subscription were going to tie services to, but cloud saves… Nah. Discounts… Ha, no. (Meanwhile, Stream exists). Oh and they’ll fight tooth and nail to not have to do warranty work (joycon drift for example).
Far less of the first party games are actually good. And any game that’s multiplatform is better on anything that’s not a Nintendo device. BotW was at best a 7/10, but the zealot fans sent death threats because it didn’t get a perfect score. And the latest entry, looks like they yet again couldn’t come up with real content so they did the classic fallback of ‘have the player make their own fun’.
Oh and the Pokemon games are garbage. Every main line game since going 3d has been shit and a waste of money. There been no actual development, it’s the same white bread game it’s been since the 90s. Sorry, the older games were better, they had villains and rivals. Now it’s what, disgruntled emo kids and an overly attached forced friend.
Most popular survival games (Minecraft, Valheim, Raft, Ark) are dull, unimaginative experiences that disrespect your time. I truly don’t get the appeal, other than if you’re a terminally online kid with nothing else going on. They promise this world of near-eternal fun and imagination, and then forget to develop fun mechanics, write a compelling story to give context to what you’re doing, give you goals, teach you how to play…
Raft is probably the worst example I can think of. What a crock of shit that game was. Zero tutorial, a terrible grind. Just lazy. You can softlock yourself in the first 30 minutes if you jump onto an island and let your raft drift away, because you can’t build a new raft, and all the game’s resources spawn around it for no good reason. The game has a Very Positive rating on Steam with over 200,000 reviews…
There are some obvious exceptions. Terraria is still so charming, and does away with the hunger/thirst/durability trappings of other survivals. I didn’t get too far into Subnautica, but it’s clearly a fresh idea and has an ambitious story. And y’know… I can’t be too hard on Minecraft, it’s iconic.
But the rest is just hollow and soul-crushing and in most cases unfinished. They’re punishing time-sinks disguised as a “world where you can do anything,” and the fact that so many go to bat for them really makes me grieve for people’s taste in games.
Hot take over… Woof, I need to lie down…
Indie is the new AAA. I think some people were saying this even back when most indie games were just 16-bit style sidescrollers. But now small teams and even individual developers are giving us stuff that looks good, plays good, and is more fun than a lot of AAA games out there, and it comes with a lot of variety too. I think that AAA games are going to become micro-transacriom factories. Once Nintendo starts putting loot boxes into their games it’s over for AAA.
Here’s another one. I do not care about 60fps unless the game looks for input every frame. Not even a little bit. I would not have known how many frames Tears of the Kingdom was running on if no one said it in the reviews, and honestly I don’t even really see the difference most of the time.
And a bonus: reamking old games is a good thing. Re-releasing is fine i guess, but enhancing character models, textures, lighting, addressing glitches and stuff that made the original less fun, and maybe giving some bonus content is a great idea. Companies like Nintendo need to stop cracking down on people emulating/modding/making fan enhancements of their old games and start making their own upgraded versions. Most people who play HD mods/remakes of their games would be happy to pay to buy a competent remake/remaster. I play Render96 for Mario 64 and own multiple copies of the game. Would I buy and HD remake anyway? Absolutely.
