Underrated and Overrated Video Games

[Fabricant451]

<Snipped quote by Fabricant451>
Not the first time a story mode was put in a sports game and worked. Shame that the Spike Lee direction was bad and short-sighted with bad integration with gameplay. People liked 2k17's story mode a lot more, and nobody ever has an issue with when Fight Night did it like ten years ago. Story within the framework of a sports game is not bad; depth is not bad. It's all in the execution and integration.

@Inkarnate

Fight Night Champion was six years ago I'll have you know. And the WWE games have been doing story for longer still - with branching paths and everything. But those games are garbage. MLB The Show has its Road to the Show thing and that's barely a story but they try for it.

FNC also came out and elevated the gameplay to the point where the generic but effective story was just the cherry on top of the icing that was its entire cake. Considering that FIFA's whole The Journey thing was not nearly as positive but the improvements thanks to the use of a new engine showed a marked improvement over the last year's model which was noteworthy only because it included women's teams. By many accounts Madden's story mode is more in line with FIFA's and doesn't even have a lot of football in it anyway.

And considering the creative director of EA Sports had Madden Longshot being pegged as a a 'playable movie' it paints comparisons to Livin Da Dream over Champion Mode because Champion Mode at least incorporated different boxing styles and techniques and gameplay elements in the fights. Sports games wanting to have story modes are fine but if you're playing like five minutes of basketball only to have fifteen minutes of your douchebag asshole friend read you his last will and testament after he dies then maybe try again.

That's probably why no one had issue with Fight Night Champion. Because it was done relatively okay.

[mickilennial]

Yeah, no disagreements there. Has it only been six years? Feels like longer.

[Dolerman]

@Fabricant451 I mean after you said bioware fans are very critical and pretty hard to please, you sorta sound like a Bethesda fan who is critical and hard to please, and you definitely aren't the only one. When it comes to those two developers I really still do believe that the fanbase have slightly more fun bitching about the games than playing them.

Even some of its more vocal critics can say positive things about it because despite it being broken and bad and boring and stupid and it literally making no sense at all from a lore and story telling perspective if you just blatantly ignore all of that you can probably find something that is enjoyable.

@Fabricant451

Since when did we start talking about Andromeda?



Its a shame that this isnt a thread about overrated TV because I would have sweet sadistic pleasure in tearing apart TWD in long form. Yes the first season was somewhere between decent and good (if not almost unbearably campy sometimes). But everything else has been pure unleaded horseshit, its a bad T.V, show with poor acting, poor plot-lines, shitty production values, predictable as sin, shit dialogue and the worst pacing I have ever seen. Game of thrones occasionally suffers from these problems but benefits from having the odd critically acclaimed episode to make you forgive some of the crap they throw at you. TWD has a mildly more involved season finale where they decide to spend more than £1000 dollars on the budget just enough to trick people who breath through their mouths to come back for the next one.

TL;DR
Season One is competent, probably has about 4 episodes that could be labelled as 'good' the rest are okay. Every other season of every other episode sucks hairy nutsack and you know it.

[mickilennial]

Here’s an underrated games opinion for you folks.

I like Mass Effect Andromeda. Genuinely. Yeah, you heard me, I like the problematic mess that is the fourth Mass Effect title, all of its flaws doesn’t deter me enjoying it as a video game. It is not as fundamentally broken as people say it is nor is it’s writing “unforgiveable”. It’s a mess, but I have fun playing each and every playthrough.

[Dolerman]

Here’s an underrated games opinion for you folks.

I like Mass Effect Andromeda. Genuinely. Yeah, you heard me, I like the problematic mess that is the fourth Mass Effect title, all of its flaws doesn’t deter me enjoying it as a video game. It is not as fundamentally broken as people say it is nor is it’s writing “unforgiveable”. It’s a mess, but I have fun playing each and every playthrough.

@Inkarnate

Yeah and I like Fallout 4, I like the shooting, the gun modding and a lot of the characters. Nothing wrong with liking a flawed game as long as you can recognise it's flaws. I think people have a problem when supporters of something try to pretend that said flaws don't exist like the people who like DCEU movies.

[Fabricant451]

@Fabricant451 I mean after you said bioware fans are very critical and pretty hard to please, you sorta sound like a Bethesda fan who is critical and hard to please, and you definitely aren't the only one. When it comes to those two developers I really still do believe that the fanbase have slightly more fun bitching about the games than playing them.

@Dynamo Frokane

I mean, Bethesda fans are generally fine with Bethesda games. It's only recently that they've started turning what with all the Skyrim re-releases and the Creation Club debacle but that's more business decisions rather than game ones. Skyrim is still widely regarded by the gaming media and the community, barring the ones who are like "ugh so shallow have you heard of The Witcher 3?" I'm not hard to please when it comes to Bethesda games. I genuinely don't like them even though I should and I want to. There's often a misconception when people are critical of games that they go in wanting to nitpick or find flaws when in reality it's more that the flaws readily present themselves.

This is especially true of Bethesda games.

Since when did we start talking about Andromeda?

Andromeda was sort of doomed from the start once people started overblowing the animations and turning it into a witch hunt over shit like a writer or person on the team having purple hair. Also, just saying, Andromeda at least manages to not dump all over its own lore so much as it just...doesn't do enough with its setting.

I liked games better when people weren't able to just go "It's Tumblr quality" in lieu of actually having an opinion. Andromeda was bad for that.

Its a shame that this isnt a thread about overrated TV because I would have sweet sadistic pleasure in tearing apart TWD in long form. Yes the first season was somewhere between decent and good (if not almost unbearably campy sometimes). But everything else has been pure unleaded horseshit, its a bad T.V, show with poor acting, poor plot-lines, shitty production values, predictable as sin, shit dialogue and the worst pacing I have ever seen. Game of thrones occasionally suffers from these problems but benefits from having the odd critically acclaimed episode to make you forgive some of the crap they throw at you. TWD has a mildly more involved season finale where they decide to spend more than £1000 dollars on the budget just enough to trick people who breath through their mouths to come back for the next one.

TL;DR
Season One is competent, probably has about 4 episodes that could be labelled as 'good' the rest are okay. Every other season of every other episode sucks hairy nutsack and you know it.

I mean, I have no opinion on the show other than "The first episode was good" and "Man, fuck AMC for shitting on Darabont and his vision because you wanted to save money the guy directed Shawshank let him work". I watched the first episode and then never watched any other episode because I remembered that I fucking loathe zombie fiction.

So I'll take your word for it.

[Double]

I've... never seen Sun and Moon get bashed. Like, the most I see is it being too Tutorial-heavy but that's pretty much it. I also think it dick-rides Kanto a little too hard (Seriously, characters in-game won't shut up about how awesome Kanto is and how strong Kanto trainers are, we get it Gamefreak!) but that was a problem in X/Y as well.

Anyway, I'm gonna piss off so many people with my choices but here we go:

Underrated: Super Paper Mario
Overrated: Paper Mario TTYD

I can hear the hate comments already. *takes a long whiff* Ah, just smell that salt! Anyway, I've been constantly hearing about Thousand Year Door nonstep every time Nintendo releases a new Paper Mario game. If it's not exactly like TTYD in every conceivable way then everyone flips their shit and declares it the "Worst game evar!!!111!!" and quite frankly I'm sick of that attitude. I'm tired of everyone acting like TTYD is the only Paper Mario game that exists when, in my honest and frank opinion, Super Paper Mario has a vastly superior story. True, the gameplay is different and "It's not like TTYD!!!11!!1" but that doesn't automatically make it bad. Hell, TTYD is a carbon copy of Paper Mario 1! There, I said it. The partners in TTYD are just shallow clones of the partners in the first game (and sometimes even worse versions of them in Flurrie's case) and the combat is literally copy/pasted with a small handful of minor things added like the audience mechanic. Even TTYD's story follows the same damn formulaic approach as Paper Mario 1. First chapter is about Peach getting kidnapped and then Mario starting the adventure with a plucky Goomba sidekick. Next chapter takes us to a Koopa village where we recruit a Blue-shelled Koopa to be our next sidekick. Next chapter takes us to the spooky woods where we get a female ghost as our next party member. See the formula here? And I'm sorry, but Count Bleck completely and utterly blows the X-Nauts out of the water as a villain. He just does.

Anyway, those are my opinions. Don't like it, well tough.

[Dolerman]

".....the guy directed Shawshank let him work".

@Fabricant451

Speaking of overrated................hmm maybe another thread.

I liked games better when people weren't able to just go "It's Tumblr quality" in lieu of actually having an opinion. Andromeda was bad for that.

@Fabricant451

I mean there are two extremes here, the people who think the game is bad purely because of the Ess Jay Dubyoo-ness, and then the reactionary people who do nothing but suck the game's dick to make up for the unfair press it got.

But the truth is somewhere in the middle, was the game overly dogpiled because of a few glitches and an anti progressive community backlash? Yes absolutely.

Would the game have been pretty weak overall anyway without said backlash and glitches?
Absolutely.

That's not saying the game has zero merit, the combat works most of the time and the characters apart from ryder and the citadel(or whatever the fuck its called in MEA) people aren't extremely unlikable. But the plot is boring, the dialogue is boring, the quests suck, the exploration sucks, the menu system is cumbersome, there is too much to do and a lot of it isn't fun to do, oh and the bad guys are underwhelmingly dull.

Its similar to the Ghostbusters thing, just because there was a huge chunk of body pillow owning MRA virgins who boycotted and trashed the film, it doesn't mean that everyone who didn't like it is a misogynist.

[Fabricant451]

<Snipped quote by Fabricant451>

Speaking of overrated................hmm maybe another thread.

@Dynamo Frokane

Man, if that thread got made I might actually get banned because I will throw down and get mean.

[Dolerman]

<Snipped quote by Dynamo Frokane>

Man, if that thread got made I might actually get banned because I will throw down and get mean.

@Fabricant451

Well my memory kicks in, you already made a movie thread a while ago and did a long form dismantling of DCEU movies, and you weren't even showing the extent of your cynicism power level.

I fear for the day you show us your true form.

[mickilennial]

That's not saying the game has zero merit, the combat works most of the time and the characters apart from ryder and the citadel(or whatever the fuck its called in MEA) people aren't extremely unlikable. But the plot is boring, the dialogue is boring, the quests suck, the exploration sucks, the menu system is cumbersome, there is too much to do and a lot of it isn't fun to do, oh and the bad guys are underwhelmingly dull.

@Dynamo Frokane

Disagree with the bolded. Mostly.

I see the problems with Andromeda, but I don’t think the quests, exploration, or the UI are one of them. I also don’t really value bargain bin subjectivism like “it’s not fun and it’s dull” considering those are meaningless buzzwords that really don’t have much insight to them at all. But yeah, Andromeda is a mess and it's certainly as a whole the weakest game in the series due to a lot of factors with only a few of these being relative things I agree with that contributed. Ultimately, Andromeda’s problem was it was a fucking frisbee. What I mean is if you look at the developmental cycle beyond social media snark and vitriol it was pretty worrisome. Inexperienced members of the development team, being tossed from one team to another to another to another over the course of development, lack of polish before release, and other issues pointed that this was going to be a mediocre final product. Social media degenerated that even more. The memes exaggerating the quality of the game did more damage. Bioware did not alleviate anything or have any foresight. It is really disappointing that the social climate is affecting games more and more when developers used to just do a few interviews and trailers for press and focus on their work but now we have entanglements like twitter, youtube, and such ruining any momentum. Good criticism is great, but reactionary kneejerk reactions make me very bitter towards my fellow gamers.

So fucking glad I got out of gaming journalism.

[Dolerman]

<Snipped quote by Dynamo Frokane>
Disagree with the bolded. Mostly.

I see the problems with Andromeda, but I don’t think the quests, exploration, or the UI are one of them. I also don’t really value bargain bin subjectivism like “it’s not fun and it’s dull” considering those are meaningless buzzwords that really don’t have much insight to them at all. But yeah, Andromeda is a mess and it's certainly as a whole the weakest game in the series due to a lot of factors with only a few of these being relative things I agree with that contributed. Ultimately, Andromeda’s problem was it was a fucking frisbee. What I mean is if you look at the developmental cycle beyond social media snark and vitriol it was pretty worrisome. Inexperienced members of the development team, being tossed from one team to another to another to another over the course of development, lack of polish before release, and other issues pointed that this was going to be a mediocre final product. Social media degenerated that even more. The memes exaggerating the quality of the game did more damage. Bioware did not alleviate anything or have any foresight. It is really disappointing that the social climate is affecting games more and more when developers used to just do a few interviews and trailers for press and focus on their work but now we have entanglements like twitter, youtube, and such ruining any momentum. Good criticism is great, but reactionary kneejerk reactions make me very bitter towards my fellow gamers.

So fucking glad I got out of gaming journalism.

@Inkarnate

[mickilennial]

Always a treat, Dynamo.

hmu when you are done memeing.

[Dolerman]

Always a treat, Dynamo.

hmu when you are done memeing.

@Inkarnate

Yes I'll definitely hit you up, if there is one thing I am lacking on this site, its subjective disagreements with Gowi.

[Dolerman]

@Fabricant451

remind me and @Inkarnate never to debate music

Gowi Type Arguement

:D

[mickilennial]

Dynamo your trolling is the equivalent of a thirteen-year-old. Try harder.

[Fabricant451]

I mean, I agree with him especially the parts about social media exaggerated things and people started thinking things like CrowbCat's video or whatever selectively edited thing was indicative of the game as a whole. Was there some bad dialog? Yes, absolutely. But then name one BioWare game that doesn't have dialog that misses. People made a huge stink over shit like "My face is tired" as if that was the entire game or else they turned to the initial flirting with Suvi as a sign that the dialog was all cringe 'Tumblr shit' completely failing to understand that Ryder isn't badass space soldier man Shepard but is literal space nerd young twenty-something who, at the time, is basically bumbling around in a position she wasn't at all trained or qualified for and now there's a cute girl complicating things. Granted it was still kind of embarrassing but that was kind of the point.

Andromeda had a lot of problems going into development starting with it being foisted off to the C-Team as well as the people leaving the company mid-development. BioWare is trying to shift towards a more open world style game since Inquisition was their blueprint going forward but that sort of thing is in exact opposite to how BioWare has typically structured their games and while I'm all for a dev taking a 'risk' considering one of Inquisition's biggest flaws was the open world having little of merit to do and areas being expansive and a chore to explore and that Andromeda was even worse about that I'm not sure why they are so focused on that instead of honing on the strengths that got them there. No one thought the Mako side shit was the best part of Mass Effect.

Gamers are the worst types of hobbyists.

[Dolerman]

I mean, I agree with him especially the parts about social media exaggerated things and people started thinking things like CrowbCat's video or whatever selectively edited thing was indicative of the game as a whole. Was there some bad dialog? Yes, absolutely. But then name one BioWare game that doesn't have dialog that misses. People made a huge stink over shit like "My face is tired" as if that was the entire game or else they turned to the initial flirting with Suvi as a sign that the dialog was all cringe 'Tumblr shit' completely failing to understand that Ryder isn't badass space soldier man Shepard but is literal space nerd young twenty-something who, at the time, is basically bumbling around in a position she wasn't at all trained or qualified for and now there's a cute girl complicating things. Granted it was still kind of embarrassing but that was kind of the point.

@Fabricant451

I mean you could take out the face is tired memes, the numerous glitches, and the questionable staff
and the game still has a fuck ton of issues. Again we can all agree that a good deal of the backlash was unjusitified, but there are plenty non red pilled MRA/MGTOW Anti SJWs who disliked the games for functional reasons.

And Ryder wasn't unlikable because he/she wasn't an unstoppable badass like shepard, Ryder was unlikable because he/she was a bland person thrown into a neutered version of the ME world surrounded by a bunch of mostly bland characters and the absolute worst sub-star trek villains you could think of. You cant blame all of this on MRA backlash.

I get that the main character is supposed to be a blank canvas, but when the game gives you nothing to paint on that canvas apart from a small selection of poorly written rookie tropes, it will reflect badly on the big picture.

[Yamada Zero]

They took a gamble with Andromeda and unfortunately, it didn't pay off. I could appreciate that they tried a different approach with the character of Ryder, rather than re-tread familiar ground and make them into another Shepard. Shepard was his/her own character, you didn't need another. Was it a good game? I didn't believe so, but was it a poor game? I don't think it was that either. The multiplayer was enjoyable and I reckon that with more development time and more polish, it would have gotten a far better reception than it did. Probably didn't help that it was a victim of the "SJWs ruin video games" rhetoric that's been making the rounds across the internet.

I also feel that quite a few people were still a little sore from the Mass Effect 3 debacle, though I wouldn't attribute that as being a major cause - but a contributing factor all the same. Some gamers find it difficult to move on. The music was pretty solid too, with this track (and scene where it was first used) being particularly memorable to me:



As an aside, I want to point out that Clancy Brown was underused. Ryder's father represented Shepard in many ways, the passing of the torch from the experienced badass veteran to the young newcomer rookie with much to learn. In time, Ryder will become like Shepard - if they even bother with the franchise again. Alas, poor quarian ark. Also it just occurred to me that I'd forgotten one minor thing: Fuck that evil cloud thing that chases after you in that vault place, I'm not playing Silent Hill Downpour.

[Fabricant451]

And Ryder wasn't unlikable because he/she wasn't an unstoppable badass like shepard, Ryder was unlikable because he/she was a bland person thrown into a neutered version of the ME world surrounded by a bunch of mostly bland characters and the absolute worst sub-star trek villains you could think of. You cant blame all of this on MRA backlash.

@Dynamo Frokane

Ryder was inherently more likable than Shepard because Shepard didn't develop much of a personality until the sequels largely because Shepard was a blank slate self-insert type of protagonist. The characters were on par with the crew of any Mass Effect game complete with the black one being the most absolutely dull one. And at least the new alien partner was more than just a Wikipedia article for his species like Tali was in the first game. The crew in Andromenda wound up feeling more like an actual crew than any of the cast of the first three games apart from Garrus and that's basically a cheat because he was there for everything.

I can think of worse villains. I just have to put in Mass Effect 2 for them. BioWare hasn't done compelling villains since Jade Empire and any character that might make for a nuanced, interesting villain wound up being ruined as soon as they put on their villain hat a la Illusive Man. The kett and The Archon were decent enough secondary motivations since they weren't the larger point until they actually involved themselves.

I'm not blaming it all on MRA backlash. I can place part of the blame on there being some rose colored glasses for large parts of the Mass Effect trilogy that only got smudged because Mass Effect 3 dropped the ball so absolutely but the more glaring problems with Andromeda as a game are more in its game design choices than its writing. But it's way easier to simply say "Cora got an SJW haircut and Peebee so randumb" than point out the actual bland, boring, and simply unfun design of the open world and moment to moment gameplay and the quest loop.

I get that the main character is supposed to be a blank canvas, but when the game gives you nothing to paint on that canvas apart from a small selection of poorly written rookie tropes, it will reflect badly on the big picture.

Ryder isn't really a blank canvas though. Unlike Shepard whose past was intentionally vague, Ryder is coming in with an unchanged occupation, background, and slew of family issues. Ryder is a painting that's three quarters finished and you're just slapping colors on there because it's due tomorrow.