I do think it’s interesting you find video games have an entry barrier that’s higher than, say, music, even though the vast majority of people don’t have a way to listen to vinyl, as per your own example.
Nowadays people need phones, so depending on the game they can indeed experience them is some form.
It sells itself on cool aesthetics, but the moment you get past that you realise it’s just a very, very generic open world shooter with incredibly bland and boring shooting layered over an impressively faithful recreation of Shinjuku. And even the aesthetics wear thin very quickly, being largely just a whole lot of “Hey I know that anime” level stuff cribbed from Japanese culture. The game is mostly just running around a map collecting stuff.
I mean, that’s exactly what makes it so “mid” to my mind. It’s not an atrocious disaster like Gollum. It’s not appalling bad, or even moderately bad. It’s just mid. The shooting isn’t dreadful, just dull. The map, the movement, the exploration… None of it is exactly bad, but none of it left any kind of impression on me. Like you said, it scratches that “running around and collecting stuff” itch, the numbers go up, you unlock new powers, etc. But it all just kind of passes straight through you and at the end you’re left with “Well, that sure did kill a few hours.”
Horizon: Zero Dawn suffers from all the usual modern open world hallmarks, the map littered with things to collect, the towers, the grinding to level up abilities, etc, etc. But the story is an absolute banger, and even a lot of the random collectible junk is full of little moments of deeply moving storytelling. I remember collecting every single one of the vantage points because I absolutely needed to hear all of the short story you unlock by doing it. It has zero relevance to the plot, but it’s just a great piece of writing. In comparison Ghost Wire is just, sort of… There.
I have a lot of childhood nostalgia for Donkey Kong 64. If you were a kid who could only get a new game every few months or so, this giant behemoth of a game will last a long time.
But it undeniably is a bloated clusterfuck, the internet is not wrong in hindsight.
Next thing that comes to mind for me is the GBA port of Tales of Phantasia. Symphonia was a huge part of my adolescent years, and as soon as I heard this was getting a GBA remake I was all over it. Loved it, and didn't hear until much later that GBA is apparently considered the worst version of the game. If PSP ever gets translated, I'd love to see what I missed out on...
Honestly the collectathon genre as a whole doesn’t hold up much these days. A few modern games pull it off here and there, but going back and trying to play any of the classic Rare titles feels like a slog.
Loved all those games as a kid, and they did a ton to shape the industry, but they don’t really hold up.
hbomberguy did a 50+ hour 101% nightmare stream for trans charity a while back and I watched the whole thing. I would not subject myself to playing that game but damn it was interesting to see.
I wonder if a fan mod of DK64 where the bananas aren’t colored would fix many of the problems. I feel like that one small change might fix a lot of complaints. I haven’t played it though.
There’s a ROM hack that let’s you swap characters with a button press rather than trek through the level to find a swap barrel and then trek back again, and do that again and again for coins, bananas, etc.
Small change that has a big impact on the replayability.
Mine was final fantasy 12. I played that game so hard, really enjoyed it and if was released in the time of trophies I would have platinumed it. Even did the grinding for Gilgamesh to spawn for a sword or something. But I was hated at the time.
Now everyone is saying it was one of the best and I was proved right all along.
Sure the story was star wars and the main character wasn’t, but the combat system was really fun, way better than 13.
I hated the game at first too. But I actually gave it a replay a while back and ended up loving it. Ironically, my love of FFX was holding me back from enjoying XII. Once I replayed it with a more open mind, I thoroughly enjoyed it. There are certain things I dislike about it, sure. But that’s true for any Final Fantasy game.
I think replaying it when I was older also helped. I didn’t have the patience for the politicking when I played it the first time. And the game’s story is very political. So I think the added maturity meant I was able to appreciate the story more.
Truly some of the worst FF decisions all in the same game.
Why is the key to the postgame dungeon a piece of undifferentiated loot? Why did the game allow me to accidentally lock myself out of the postgame by selling it?
Why is the story is a low effort clone of Star Wars?
Why set FF12 in the world of FF:Tactics but make no reference to it?
Why, oh why, an all-women-race of playboy bunny girls in lingerie and heels?
That being said, programming your own teams’ AI is peak jrpg wish there was more of that. This baby got thrown out with all that dirty bath water unfortunately
Interesting I don’t think I’ve seen anyone call it the best before. I loved the shit out of ff7/9/10 and was so excited for 12 and it was one of the first big gaming letdowns I can remember. Ive still had the heart to pick it back up.
I liked a lot about the original. I thought the real-time, turn-based fighting system was going to take over as the new fighting system going forward to replace the ATB as the go-to, and I was happy about it (XIII and XV would have been better for it).
The remaster raised the game to its full potential imo. Having jobs is so much better than free-for-all. And getting rid of the Zodiac Spear disqualification treasure chests is just good on my psyche.
FF12 is definitely my favorite FF. The combat system is the most interesting to me - programming your party to act how you want without spending the time of selecting combat options every single round. It’s also why I love the first Dragon Age and hated the sequels. I wish more games used that type of combat.
Dual nominations for Paper Mario: Sticker Star & Paper Mario: Color Splash. The only thing I really remember about them is that I played them and they left me without any feelings about them whatsoever.
I spent a lot of time playing Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts alone and online with friends. A lot of people I’ve talked to view it negatively and are surprised when I say it was one of my favorite 360 titles. It’s one of the main reasons I want to try out Xbox 360 emulation.
Yes really. I played it all the time as a kid and didn’t think it was any more difficult or abstract than the rest of the 2600’s catalogue. Granted, we kept the manual, which made a huge difference in understanding and enjoying its bizarre logic, but still. I had no idea it was so hated until at least a decade later.
it was actually way ahead of its time, for a game. One small bug (the workaround for which was in the manual) ruined its reputation. But I genuinely think it was a good game.
Also written in 6 weeks by one guy. Freaking impressive
when climbing out of the pit, it was very easy to immediately fall back down (due to the pixel-perfect collision detection).
And here is an excerpt from the manual: “Even experienced extraterrestrials sometimes have difficulty levitating out of wells. Start to levitate E.T. by first pressing the controller button and then pushing your Joystick forward. E.T.'s neck will stretch as he rises to the top of the well (see E.T. levitating in Figure 1). Just when he reaches the top of the well and the scene changes to the planet surface (see Figure 2), STOP! Do not try to keep moving up. Instead, move your Joystick right, left, or to the bottom. Do not try to move up, or E.T. might fall back into the well.”
he was forced to release it quickly to coincide with the film’s release. For comparison, it used to take a team of devs a couple of months to make a game. He had 6 weeks.
Also, if you read the manual, this essentially never happened to you. It was easy to avoid.
You also needed to read the manual. The game did stuff that other games at the time didn’t, for example, a contextual button. You couldn’t know what would happen unless you read the manual to learn what the icons meant. A lot of people never did and so decided that the game was bad.
Yeah, I played it as a teenager on emulation and was pretty mystified at why it was considered so much worse than the other things available on the system. Why would people love Adventure but hate this?
bin.pol.social
Aktywne