Unpopular Gaming Opinions

[Lord of Rapture]

This isn't a place to start flame wars, this thread is just a place you can finally put down gaming opinions of yours without fear of getting mobbed.

1. Fallout 3 is amazing, but I'm not planning to get Fallout 1 or 2, partly because they don't sell it where I'm living, and partly because I think turn-based combat for modern gunplay is heresy.

2. In fact, I think Fire Emblem is the only series that ever did turn-based combat well.

3. Oblivion was a messy, underwhelming pile of dog poo that needed a lot more playtesting, tweaks, and better plot writing before it was released. But then the last comment could be said of Fallout 3 as well.

4. Halo 3 was really boring. Being only able to equip two guns? Having all the weapons generic and underwhelming? Making the level desing boxy and uninspired? Absolutely throwaway plot? Lame.

5. Starcraft lost all value less than one year after Brood War. Dawn of War is so much better.

6. Graphics do not alone make a good game, but they can certainly make a game better.

EDIT: Looks like some people don't understand what I meant in the first line...
What I meant to say is that you can debate, just don't let it get too heated.

[Cúchulainn]

This isn't a place to start flame wars,

Oh okay then I suppose nothing here will make me rage too har-


2. In fact, I think Fire Emblem is the only series that ever did turn-based combat well.

:smallfurious: :smallfurious: :smallfurious: :smallfurious:

No but seriously:

1. WoW is a good game. It's a fun game. But you need to play it with dedicated, good friends, or else it will frustrate the hell out of you. Yes the community sucks. Yes PvP is the most unfair thing in the world right now, including Tibet. But with friends the experience of it is pretty unbeatable.

2. Final Fantasy died at IV. IX was a phoenix down. X was a Doom spell. X-2 is when Doom kicked in. You cannot reload.

3. Pokemon died at the original Red/Blue/Yellow, nothing else matters.

4. Diablo 2 was boring.

5. Deus Ex died with JC at Area 51, and yes he did die there, he didn't become a god.

6. PC gaming is far superior to console gaming, and if you pay for xbox live you are funding terrorism.

Maybe more to come.

[Tensu]

So people just post their opinions and nobody is allowed to argue?

Then what's really the point? I could get the same effect shouting random pseudo-controversial crap in a public place.:smallconfused:

[Hyozo]

Would "Super Smash Brothers is better than boring ordinary fighting games largely due to it's fun stages and items, therefore those should not be refused in group gameplay." be an opinion which fits here?

[Artanis]

1) I agree with Cúchulainn on WoW. It's fun. 99% of the bitching about WoW that I see tends to be people trying to convince others that having fun doesn't matter.

2) Star Control 3 was not that bad of a game. Despite what people say, it was not going to come out of your computer at night and eat your children while setting your house on fire and tying your dog to railroad tracks. It wasn't a good game, mind you, it just wasn't the scourge of mankind that people make it out to be.

3) I loved Halo's level design. I also think Halo was a really good game, though that opinion is rather popular outside of "geek" forums like this one. Sadly, I haven't really gotten to play any of the other Halo games :smallfrown:

4) DOOM 2 sucked. The atmosphere and downright fear for your life was what made DOOM a good game: DOOM 2 largely threw that out the window in favor of making it more like what Serious Sam would be someday.

5) Goldeneye's controls were pretty good. Granted, they wouldn't have worked well in other games, but Goldeneye utilized them much better than it would've been able to use a "traditional" scheme.

6) A game can be good without multiplayer. Even more shocking and heretical, I think that trying to add multiplayer can sometimes make a game worse.

7) Good graphics don't matter. Period. Sure, being pretty is nice, but so is being able to run it with an outdated computer.

8) Click speed != Micro

[Faulty]

The Final Fantasy games suck. The only really entertaining one is Tactics. VI is probably the best numbered one, with IV being ok, but both are skippable. VII is one of the most monumentally overrated games ever. XI is the most painful MMO and game in general it's ever been my displeasure to play.

Ocarina of Time is not God's gift to gamers. Everything Valve releases is (though this isn't quite an unpopular notion).

[Tensu]

tying your dog to railroad tracks.

I'm confused as to way you listed a lawful good act amongst examples of evil.

I guess I'll give this a go, even though I question the thread's logic.

*Ahem*

Melee is way better than brawl. everything about brawl, save the adventure mode and the stage editor was a let down. the adventure mode is still a good game, but melee was by far the better mash bros. game.

Halo is a mediocre at best game that's only real innovation was shiny graphics.

Even though a lot of the pokemon it introduced where a little lame, Diamond/pearl introduced a lot of necessary changes and new moves to the game while keeping all the old stuff and is therefore the best pokemon game yet. the series has been getting better in every department but story. people who insist R/B/Y where best aren't being nostalgic: They're being stubborn, and if they ever really loved R/B/Y they would love the new games, because sequels aren't meant to replace your old favorites, they're meant to improve on them.

PC gaming never has been and never will be the ultimate form of gaming for the simple fact it is done on a PC.

Parties suck. Unless you can write party members who are funny, interesting, and cool (Like Rei) I do not want to be in a party. I'm perfectly capable of saving existence by myself.

Villians who are just plain evil are generally not very good villains. the best villains are ones who have a bit of a point.

Turn based battle systems are excellent.

Card based battle systems are excellent.

Games need to focus on multiplayer less. There should be no aspect of a game that is "multiplayer only". You know when I want to play games? when my friends aren't around.

[Texas Jedi]

I have hated all of the Halo games because the levels are long and boring. People only like the game because it was many peoples first experiance with Multiplaying so they look at it fondly.

That is the same opionion I have about why people scream that FFVII is the best of the series. It was many peoples first RPG. The series best was VI hands down. Even VI that was blown away by Chrono Trigger, and both of them loose to KOTOR and BG 1&2.

I hate any of the Metal Gear Solid games. I want to play a freaking game not watch cut scenes.

I hate the God of War games just because you can wrap up the game in pretty graphics doesn't hide the fact that it is a boring button masher.

[Cubey]

4) DOOM 2 sucked. The atmosphere and downright fear for your life was what made DOOM a good game: DOOM 2 largely threw that out the window in favor of making it more like what Serious Sam would be someday.


One word: Downtown. Still, your opinion.

Final Fantasy IV is a weak (not weakest though) link in the series. It aged badly.
On the other hand, Final Fantasy V is pretty cool.
WoW is a good game.
Grand Theft Auto III bores me, and I have no interest in GTA IV. It annoys me that hardly anyone remembers about GTA I and II (which were pretty fun but not stellar either).
Graphics CAN make a difference. They don't have to be cutting edge but they must be aesthetically pleasing, unless you're deliberately (Dwarf Fortress, MUDs) going for an ASCII game. Which brings us to...
Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magic Obscura is a bad game. Lots of wasted potential.
jRPGs are generally better than western-style RPGs, especially in the recent years.
In the same vein, plot-heavy but limited in interaction is generally better than a sandbox with light or inexistant plot.
Lara Croft is shallow and her games tend to suck. Samus Aran is much hotter... wait, that's not really an unpopular opinion at all!

Finally, less about the games and more about gamers:
If you can't succeed on a game requiring manual coordination, don't call it Nintendo Hard, or a twitch/stupid game. Just admit that you suck at dexterity. It doesn't make you a bad person, so admit it and don't blame the game.

[Fan]

Here's mine.

valve SUCKS HARD.
Why you ask would I say this?

Half life 1, 2, Episode 1, Episode 2: Are all examples of how NOT to make a first person shooter/ action adventure game. Cliche B-movie ALIEN ZOMBIES! Steals half its enemies from other sources: Strider: War of The worlds. Ant lions: Starship troopers almost EXACT copy. The oh so cliche of "Everybody talks but you" protaginist that makes you feel like your in a rail road of a plot, which it is, and even Gordon Freeman's concept was stolen from a old Johnny Depp movie (and I dislike Johnny Depp as well.))

Portal: So simple that I basicly just sat there preforming child level basic puzzle work for a hour and a half before killing GLaDoS.

Left for Dead: Don't even get me started.

[Prime32]

Portal: So simple that I basicly just sat there preforming child level basic puzzle work for a hour and a half before killing GLaDoS.
It's not meant to be difficult. It's meant to be unique. And funny.

[Ascension]

1.) SRPGs superior. All else inferior.

2.) That being said, point and click adventure games are excellent. They're atmospheric, generally have intriguing plots (though they often use lame excuses to shoehorn extra puzzles into the environment), and are a wonderful break from twitchy games.

3.) Real Time Strategy games which feature on-site resource gathering and factory building are stupid. The RTS format should be limited to small-scale tactical combat, like Desert Rats vs. Afrika Korps, or the battlefield component of a game in which construction is sensibly handled off-site, like the Total War series.

4.) Jumping challenges are simply irritating. Platformers should be more focused on challenging enemies and bosses than on lethal level design.

5.) 3D is overrated. Games that are designed for three dimensions are fun, but there's no reason a game franchise that was built for 2D should try to make the jump to more "advanced" gameplay. Castlevania seems to have learned this lesson. Other franchises have not.

6.) Graphics in general are overrated. Give me an ugly game that plays well over a pretty mess any day.

7.) The DS is the best platform for gaming on the market. Computer gaming requires a stupid level of commitment to keeping one's computer up to date. The PSP, 360, and PS3 prioritize style over substance. The Wii, though awesome, takes its (admittedly also awesome) gimmick a bit too far. The DS has proven capable of supporting just about every conceivable type of game, from casual to FPS, and its library is large and varied enough anyone can find something that tickles his or her fancy. Its graphics, though perhaps not fully on par with modern expectations, are more than good enough. On top of all that, it's portable. I can imagine no rational objection to the DS's superiority.

[TheSummoner]

The Final Fantasy games suck (...) VII is one of the most monumentally overrated games ever.

I hate you so much... for beating me to that

I suppose I better say something original then...

ahem... *takes a deep breath* Graphics have a MINIMAL at best impact on the quality of a game! Subpar graphics take nothing away from an otherwise amazing game, and great graphics do nothing for a game with nothing else to offer! Good graphics are only able to enhance an already good game, NOTHING more! Banjo Kazooie was a better 3d platformer than Super Mario 64! (My friend once whipped me with a metal chain dog leashfor saying that). Rare hasn't made a single good game since Nintendo sold them to Microsoft! WoW is a great MMO, but that doesn't change the fact that the raging nerd-fandom somehow figured out how to make it overrated! Video games don't make people kill people, annoying whiney politicians who scapegoat the responsibility onto violent games because they're too pathetic to tell people to take personal responsibility for their make people so mad that they kill people! Xbox SUCKS! Nintendo, quit shoveling that worthless Wii-do our taxes crap at us, your loyal fant want GOOD games, NOT shovelware! Sony, no one is going to buy your magical black bullet-deflecting box unless you lower the freaking price! *cough cough* Original and well presented plot *cough* most powerful thing *cough cough* draw people into games...

*collapses*

[Terraoblivion]

Games were not better in the old days. People who think so have just grown more jaded or have bad memory and are the gaming equivalent of people longing for the 50s to be back.

Developers of PC games have only themselves to blame for the increasing obsolescence of the platform. If they hadn't bought so much into the graphics card arms race and the focus on competitive multiplayer they would not be in the sorry state they are in.

Multiplayer is merely one form of entertainment and not all gamers prefer it. People who like to play alone are no dumber or more antisocial than people who go for multiplayer, they merely have different priorities.

Games don't have to be brutally challenging to be fun. Having the feeling of being awesome and making progress every time you play is an entirely valid source of entertainment. So is just wanting to soak in the atmosphere and look at the scenery.

Halo was one of the few fun FPSes ever in single-player. It had pretty environments for the major part and not having to hunt for health packs or ration your health makes for a more fun game. So does low punishment on failure, being able to die spectacularly is just as fun as carefully monitoring every step you do to make them most efficient.

Half-Life 2 on the other hand was a fairly bland and mediocre game. It brought nothing except for the same three physics puzzles to the genre, while sticking closely to a real is brown aesthetic and having an uninteresting, undeveloped plot filled with bland, generic characters.

It is not all about gameplay. Sound and graphics matter a lot to the experience of a game, not to even get me started on the writing. These things make up a much larger part of the gaming experience than the exact tweaking of balance between weapons for well over 90% of everyone playing a given game and close to 100% in some games. It is more about style than about technical quality, however.

Overly muscled, macho men are more disgusting and does more to keep women from gaming than female fanservice characters. Women are generally not attracted to such characters, can't identify with them and certainly don't have any desire to be them. The same applies to most men.

[Fan]

It's not meant to be difficult. It's meant to be unique. And funny.

And yet it fails to be either simultaneously!
*le gasp*
The attempted murder/ Revenge plot isn't really that funny, and the whole "Teleport to get around" thing isn't the most unique thing on the block, not done to death, but still not original.

[ericgrau]

Similar to others, but with a twist: A lot of old games are better made than new games simply because they are better games; no nostalgia required. Flashy graphics is a crutch for bad design. There are exceptions, even among good graphic games, but the number of bad games or even just games on par with old stuff is astounding.

[Zarah]

valve SUCKS HARD.

Quoted for utter truth. Seriously guys, get off your ass and work on Episode Three. Believe it or not, there are people in the world who don't care about Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead. I know they're popular, but so is the Half-Life franchise. We've been waiting patiently for over a year, and still haven't heard a speck of news. In fact, the last thing I heard about Episode Three was that they hadn't started it. While I am aware that Valve doesn't have the best track record for releasing games on time, it's getting to the point where it's just ridiculous.

And speaking of overrated games... Sackboy. Die, sackboy, die. Seriously, even before Little Big Planet was released, I was so sick of seeing him everywhere, but even afterward it seems like we'll never be able to get rid of him. Maybe I'm just a jaded PC gamer (most likely), but honestly, not everyone thinks he's cute.

And finally (this rant has been building up for a long time), game developers need to stop using multiplayer as a crutch. Though I haven't played many games lately, I've watched reviews. And I'll bring up Dawn of War 2 and Halo Wars as my prime examples. Both of them have more than one playable faction, yet the campaign only focuses on one of them, letting multiplayer to pick up the slack. Sorry, but that's what we call a cop-out. RTSs in the good old days would teach players how to use each of the different factions through the campaign, especially when said factions play differently than the others. But these days, it seems like you can't even find an RTS with a full campaign anymore, which is frankly, unforgivable. Even Blizzard is succumbing to this with Starcraft 2. The campaign is Terran-only, and while it'll be as long as the full campaign from the original game, was it really necessary to make it one-faction-exclusive? Couldn't you have just split each of the three campaigns into thirds and packed them all together?

Multiplayer in general is totally overrated, and like I said, game developers are treating it like a crutch to get away with cutting corners, while alienating those of us who don't care.

Whew.

[Querzis]

Lets see:

Graphic are important only for one thing: the cute video games babes...otherwise I really dont freaking care about graphic and even for the cute video games babes there are lots of girls in games with bad graphic I find extremely cute since I got lots of imagination and therefore I dont find it hard to imagine what she would look like even from a 16-bits sprite (its basically the same reason why I think Haley is really cute even if shes a freaking stick figure).

Fun and plot matter in a video game, nothing else. I can play a game just because its fun and I can play a game just because the story is really good but I absolutely cant play a game just for the gameplay/graphic/whatever.

And by the way, yes WoW is fun. I cant even tell you why its so fun but it is and I played lots of other MMORPG with better gameplay then WoW that were nowhere as fun as WoW. Also, I actually find the game more enjoyable if you are a loner with a lot more people in your ignore list then in your friend list. I was just in a guild three times and it didnt last a week, I just really dont like that (or raiding for that matter, any dungeon that last more then three hours is definitly not for me). You just need a few friends and a decent gear.

The 3D sonic games are actually really fun too with the exception of Sonic Riders...and probably that one for the Xbox360 (I havent played it but it does look horrible). In fact, Sonic Adventure 2 was by far the best Sonic and yes, I played all the old sonic games. The control in the 3D sonic games are nowhere as hard as everyone says and everytime I see a video where one of the reviewers who give the game a 5/10 play, I'm convinced most of the people who hate it are just really bad at it.

The best Wii games are single players games and I dont understand why everyone says its a console for party. Between Zack and Wiki, Mario Galaxy, No more heroes, Deadly creatures, Fire emblem, Resident evil: Umbrella chronicle or Metroid prime 3 (which are all games I own) you really dont need other people to enjoy playing your Wii.

Finally, Warcraft 3 = best game ever (and yes I played Starcraft). Sure its not really an unpopular opinion but whatever. By the way, while I do like WoW, I would much prefer a Warcraft 4. But, as Zarah said, I really hope they do a campaign for all factions if they ever release a Warcraft 4.

By the way Prime 32 and FF fanboy, you can agree with what other people say but I'm pretty damn sure the point of this thread is that you cant argue with other people.

[Faulty]

I hate you so much... for beating me to that

Hee hee. <3

I'm a huge Valve fanboy, but I'm going to hold my tongue. :smalltongue:

Anyway, an apparently unpopular opinion:

Graphics DO have an effect on the quality of a game. I take the time period in which the game came out into consideration; I won't bash old cames for coming in, at most, 800x600. However, if I'm running through corridors and corridors of grey and brown, it begins to have an effect on me. It's why the original Half-Life and it's expansion packs and Deus Ex, while fantastic, still don't overshoot games like No One Lives Forever and Half-Life 2. I can go through the game without being depressed by drab colour pallets. However, graphics are not EVERYTHING. Some of the best games EVAR have dated or meh graphics. Crysis on the other hand... :smallsigh:

Touching on what Querzis said: game babes. I happen to dislike scantly clad, large breasted women in my games. Especially sci-fi/fantasy/fighting games, where these women are going into combat half naked and apparently braless. I find Ivy from Soul Calibur hugely unattractive, while I find the comparably small breasted and fully clothed Zoey from Left 4 Dead very appealing. I also feel like the more objectified women are harder to care about... they feel less like characters or more like moving sex dolls.

[JMobius]

If there is an unpopular opinion to be had, I most likely sport it. I think its kind of funny how much of a naysayer elitist I've wound up being. I don't think its because I just like going against the grain, so much as a lot of modern stances on gaming just don't grab me.

I hate Blizzard. Warcraft, Starcraft, WoW, everything that they've done I find horribly overrated.

I hate how "RPG" has come to mean "you have dudes that level up". A special place in my heart is reserved for disliking JRPGs.

I find FPS and shooters in general a genre that is dull and hit a dead end years ago.

While I respect D&D for its place in popularizing roleplaying, it is in the running for being the worst system I'm familiar with. Just for added fuel, while still atrocious, 4E is vastly better than its predecessor.

I'm not trolling, I swear. :smalltongue:

[Fri]

So people just post their opinions and nobody is allowed to argue?

Then what's really the point? I could get the same effect shouting random pseudo-controversial crap in a public place.:smallconfused:

Despite what most people believe, the internet isn't just for debating anonymously.

[Faulty]

Despite what most people believe, the internet isn't just for debating anonymously.

My mind has been blown.

[Cubey]

Are our opinions supposed to be unpopular as opposed to the popular view of the Mainstream Player (favorite game: Halo, GTA III, WoW*), or the Anti-Mainstream Player (favorite game: ICO, Dwarf Fortress, Alpha Centauri*)?

Well, I guess mine tend to be unpopular in both roughly-defined social groups. Such as...

Every game is good until proven otherwise. That proving might be very easy, but it still must be proven for me. Also, I don't judge what I didn't play.

Or.
Unpopular opinions aren't better than popular ones. Some things are popular because they're good. That was meta.


* - these examples aren't used to antagonize the type of a player, only to give a general idea of what I mean. Cubey played at least the demo of each of these and found them pretty good at worst and brilliant at best.
Except for GTA. And not because of the violence.

[Morty]

Well, here's mine: most games that are called "cRPGs", especially recent ones, aren't in fact RPGs. Another one would be: there are people who don't own a consol and are perfectly content with it.

[Johnny Blade]

Despite what most people believe, the internet isn't just for debating anonymously.
You're right, it's also good for porn, poker, and killing all newspapers in existence.

An opinion of my own: The combat system of JRPGs is for braindead idiots. Turn-based combat with no tactical movement? Seriously?
(I don't know how unpopular this opinion actually is, so I decided to spice things up a little by voicing it in a deliberately insulting manner.)


Also, one for every German (or German-speaking person) here: Drakensang is one of the worst games in history. Role-playing aspects, combat, plot, it sucks at everything.

[TakeV]

Sephiroth was a terrible villain.

KOTOR2 was far, far better than KOTOR1.

The spirit eater system from MotB was a good idea.

FFIX was awesome.

Zero Punctuation can be viewed in a way that is not either taking Yahtzee's word as the bible or that is he is just an ignorant troll.

Oot was ok. Wind Waker was much better. Majora's Mask was the best Zelda game ever.

I had more, I'll add them when I remember...

[Neon Knight]

Bioware's best game is Jade Empire. Mass Effect is average to sub-par.

KOTOR 1 and KOTOR 2 are both good for different reasons.

The Final Fantasy games are alright. Not awesome, but not bad. Alright.

System Shock was never really that good.

Halo was good, and above average (until 3, anyway, where the design got a bit wonky.)

Multiplayer is important, but it is not the Holy Grail.

[Ascension]

Oh, let me also chime in with the multiplayer is overrated crowd. Even though I do at least have a connection fast enough for internet multiplayer now, it still doesn't appeal to me all that much, and split screen just... doesn't... work. There's never enough room to see anything. The only genres I like multiplayer in are fighting and strategy.

[Maxymiuk]

"Blank slate" protagonists break immersion instead of facilitating it. A character - every character - should be an integral part of his own setting.

Supreme Commander was a boring game about resource management.


Another one would be: there are people who don't own a consol and are perfectly content with it.

Seconded. But as a collorary: It's quite possible to own a PC and a console (or two) and like both equally.

[Drascin]

Unpopular? Well, I dunno if they're unpopular or not, but these are a few I don't hear around much.

Sheer graphical power is extremely secondary. Really. Developers, spend the graphic time on design and atmosphere, please, because having an envolving atmosphere and a nice style is much more rewarding than being able to count the freckles on some NPC's face. I still say Crystal Chronicles for the Cube looks and feels better than most new games, and Mario Galaxy is one of the best-looking games of the whole new gen. And players, please stop getting into shouting matches about how your game has more pixels than mine, because you're only encouraging this.

A game should be challenging on preference, true, but not stupidly so. A game's challenge should come from itself, not arbitrary limitations or random deaths out of nowhere. If you're one of all of those people who scream that all games should start at hard mode, that we should go back to the days of the NES and have no saves, or even have a roguelike feature for save erase on death, kindly shut up, because most genres would hurt immensely from it. And this is a CAVE player talking.

Characters are more important than setting/plot. I don't care if your RPG world is three kinds of epic if I'm spending most of my game time wishing every member in my party and/or temporal companion to shut up and die a painful death and having to mute my TV during cutscenes because I don't want to hear them.

I want my strategy games to be about strategy, not about clicks per minute.

[Ascension]

"Blank slate" protagonists break immersion instead of facilitating it. A character - every character - should be an integral part of his own setting.

"Amen say we, we will be witnesses."

Err... Yes. I agree.

[Tensu]

I would much rather play a blank slate protagonist than be stuck as a character I dream about killing for 50+ hours or so. I hate you Loyd. I hate how stupid you are. I hate your choice of weapons. I hate your personality. I even hate the way you dress. It's like everything about you was tailor-made to **** me off.

Another example is Valens. There's not really anything wrong with him other than that you'd think a guy who enters armed combat for a living wouldn't be such a freaking pansy. Ok, you're not racist Valens, I get it. there are better ways to demonstrate this than letting Urlan walk all over you. This is your school, **** it! Show some freaking spine!

And Luso... Take off that freaking hat! You're a blue mage, not a stupid pink hat mage!

Not only are muscle man deterring to female gamers, but I can't stand them either. I'd go so far as to say it's sexist, implying all men are either big dumb brutes or scheming bastards.

I'd agree That the DS is the best platform for gaming right now for the same reason a lot of old games are better: experimentation.

Nowadays it costs so much to make a game it can't be allowed to fail, so everyone sticks to somewhat the same tried-and-true template. Way back when games where easy to make, you could afford to try new things, things like playing as the last boss and killing the protagonists in the last chapter or something crazy like that. nowadays if a game isn't about space marines it probably won't even be made.

I would agree that OoT is not God's gift to gaming. the entire LoZ series is.

I don't know how someone could suggest a railroad RPG is better than a sandbox one, esp. since most railroad RPGs are some variation of "Big evil guy with no real motivation wants to become a deity and than destroy the world for no properly explained reason" I mean sure, if the plot was good it's be fun to see 'till the end, but that's seldom the case.

As for valve and originality, I distinctly remember fighting headcrabs in breath of fire II.

It's true that graphics are a big part of a game's experience and discounting graphics altogether is stupid, but graphics don't have to be the "Real=brown" most games shove down out throats these days. Cel-shaded and even old Snes style graphics have their charm. Graphics do not have the same impact as flavor, that is the overfall theme and feel of a game, but they are a part of flavor, and while it's parts may not be more important than gameplay, the sum of them may be as or even more important than gameplay.

[Trizap]

this entire thread somehow is the most hilarious thing I have ever read.

I'm not insulting anyone, its just......funny.

[CyberRebirth]

Majora's Mask was the best Zelda game ever.

This is probably one of the only things that I agree with your post, but damn do I agree.

[Terraoblivion]

Twilight Princess was a vastly improved game over Ocarina of Time. Sure it does not revolutionize the series, but as a game judged on modern standards it is both better written, more atmospheric and with more fluid gameplay than Ocarina of Time. OoT just hasn't aged well.

Skinny bishounen who look like girls are still preferable to most manly game characters. Manliness is a sexist cliche that i have complained about before so i won't do so again.

Unpopular opinions about gaming are not generally better than popular ones, they are just more unusual. Mainstream games are generally not bad despite what gaming elitists would have you believe. This does not mean you have to personally like them, however.

Elitist gamers influence game development as much or more as more casual gamers and are typically more conservative as well. Despite their constant demands of innovation they are also the people most likely to shoot down attempts at innovation down with overly specific demands as to how new games should be. NMA is merely the most prominent and extreme example of this.

[ufo]

this entire thread somehow is the most hilarious thing I have ever read.

I'm not insulting anyone, its just......funny.

If for nothing else, then the fact that even though these are supposed to be unpopular opinions, half of the people agree with each other.

[Surrealistik]

Developers of PC games have only themselves to blame for the increasing obsolescence of the platform. If they hadn't bought so much into the graphics card arms race and the focus on competitive multiplayer they would not be in the sorry state they are in.

Wow, I completely disagree with that. Consoles are gaining on PCs due primarily to a combination of saturation marketing, their acquisition of multiplayer capabilities, the relative ease involved in purchasing, using and maintaining them, and their relative inexpensiveness as compared to a gaming rig. At present there are plenty of titles for casual gamers available for the PC. Also, trying to blame the prevalence of competitive multiplay for the woes of the PC is patently absurd; multiplayer of all types is one of the most profound advantages the PC enjoys (even now, as its multiplayer support is generally superior).

[Terraoblivion]

While the other half agrees with each other in opposition to the first.

[Faulty]

I would agree that OoT is not God's gift to gaming. the entire LoZ series is.

Touché, good sir.

[warty goblin]

A whimsical observation. For all the people who say graphics don't matter, there's an aweful lot of whinging about brown game worlds and over muscled protagonists...I love the smell of irony on the internets.

1) Nothing emperical can be said about the qaulity of a game, any game, no matter what. Emperical statements can be made about the popularity of a game, and about the technical stability of a game, but that's about all. Everything else is subjective opinion.
Now that said...

2) Graphics matter. Yep, I said it. I'm fundamentally more likely to play a game I find attractive than one I find eye-rendingly hideous, that's all there is to it. This is particularly true because let's face it, gameplay differences between games of a genre are generally reasonably small. Unless I'm looking for one of the very few things only offered by game X, which happens to look like the business end of a cow's digestive tract, there's no reason not to play game Y which is a visual feast. Now if game X is the only game that offers some feature I love, I'll tolerate the BS looking game world until I am sated with that unique element, then go back to playing Crysis thank you very much.

3) Speaking of which Crysis and Far Cry 2 are hands down the best FPS games of the last five years, simply without question in my mind. The degree of tactical freedom, chance for creative gameplay, and simple unpredictable mayhem is simply without compare. The fact that 95% of all this is a completely organic outgrowth of the games' AI, weapons and physics makes it feel about a billion times more meaningful than yet another scripted corridor fight. Which brings me to-

4) Call of Duty and it's ilk are just terrible, terrible ideas executed (at best) competantly. Yes, this includes CoD 4. Let's be honest here people, setting an FPS in the modern era is not the revolutionary, or even evolutionary move people make it out to be. The Rainbow 6 series has always been more or less modern day. Even in this console generation Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter came out before CoD4, had bullets that could penetrate cover, and featured a hearty helping of terrorist shooting, along with better AI and more room for actual tactics as opposed to memorizing enemy spawn locations. All moving Call of Duty out of WWII did was take the game from the most overused setting to the second or third, depending where one ranks 'Space Marine' in the overall list of FPS cliches. Moving on from that the CoD single player is barely even a game by Sid Meier's formulation ("a series of interesting choices") because there aren't any choices to make. I really generally don't care about multiplayer in general, but what I've played of CoD online feels like essentially deathmatch, not a deep or interesting experience by any means when compared with the subtlety and careful execution of a good game of Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

5) Sins of a Solar Empire is the best thing to happen to RTS games since Company of Heroes. Between the two of them the old style design has, in my mind, been rendered null and void. Good for a romp down Memory Lane, but no longer at all representative of the best the genre is capable of anymore.

[Morty]

Also, one for every German (or German-speaking person) here: Drakensang is one of the worst games in history. Role-playing aspects, combat, plot, it sucks at everything.

Heh. I had really high hopes about that game, but after playing the demo I was sorely disappointed. And everything I've heard so far says that the rest of the game isn't much better.

[Prime32]

Twilight Princess was a vastly improved game over Ocarina of Time. Sure it does not revolutionize the series, but as a game judged on modern standards it is both better written, more atmospheric and with more fluid gameplay than Ocarina of Time. OoT just hasn't aged well.
The start of OoT aged very poorly, but it gets better after the Kokiri segment. That "distorting corridor" and other sequences in the Forest Temple are like nothing I have seen in any other game. Oh, and the drawn-on faces have their charm.

One of the things which irked me about TP: the items.
Shortly after getting bombs, I encounter walls which cannot be blown up, and require a ball-and-chain to smash them instead. Once I have the ball-and-chain, there is no longer any reason to use bombs :smallconfused: In the next dungeon, I encounter walls which cannot be smashed with the ball-and-chain, and instead require me to animate statues to break them for me. The Spinner was one of the most random items I have ever seen, and I find it very difficult to justify placing tracks for it around Hyrule. The item for the sky dungeon felt like a cheat and something I should have been able to do anyway. Oh, and how often do you get to use the Slingshot?

Also: The gameplay was really repetitive - the first three parts of the game can be summed up as "Enter Twilight, get turned into a wolf, find bugs and destroy them, then talk to Light Spirit".

One last thing: I was really expecting Link to use the Moon Pearl to transform into a wolf.

The game has style, but sometimes it feels like it's trying too hard to be Lord of the Rings, Okami, Ico/Shadow of the Colossus and a Spaghetti Western at the same time.


Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFB7gQNw8Vo&fmt=18
As for storytelling... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbcmNoWBedE&fmt=18)
Wind Waker gave Ganondorf more depth, while Twilight Princess just made him "Bwahahaha I'm evil!"

[Tensu]

there is no longer any reason to use bombs

Bomb arrows. (and water bombs)

I really liked TP, But I myself have a couple of criticisms of it.

1. Not enough stuff to do as a wolf

2. Rod of domination had too limited use. so did Spinner. They where cool though

3. It was more liner than most Zelda games: There wasn't as much to do besides the main dungeons.

4. Navi may have been annoying, but Midna was a backstabbing, self-serving, kill-stealing, civilization-dooming, traitorous, decietful, decietful little *****! And to make it worse, I trusted her!

I complement it on

1. Haveing the wolf at all. I love any kind of shapeshifting

2. The master sword will kill you, but the Ball an Chain will END YOU! Unfortunatly Gannondorf can't be ended, only killed.:smallfrown:

3. It's exellent atmospheres.

4. It's epic boss fights

I don't know why everyone seem to think TP was trying to be LotR. Heck, everyone says everything is trying to be LotR with no real evidence to prove it.

I do disagree about the double clawshot being a disappointment. most items late in a Zelda game are just cool ways to move around, because by them you've got your combat style figured out. See: Cain of Stomana, Silver gauntlet, Gold gauntlet, mirror shield, etc. The double clawshot didn't have to be special: it just had to be awesome, and the ability to fight dragons and such while suspended thousands of feet in the air was pretty awesome.

And I really liked the western shootout style segments in Goron mine and Kakariko village. Just because there's castles doesn't mean there can't be western shootouts. That's the beauty of fantasy: You can put anything in there as long as it's awesome.

[BRC]

Good Graphics = Visually appealing Graphics, not Shiny ultradetailed graphics.
Especially when talking about PC games, where having superdetailed graphics can cut off a hefty market, namely people who would buy the game, but their computer can't run it. What's really more important is that the graphics work with the general feel of the game.
2: Okay, this one isn't exactly "Unpopular", but who remembers when developers would finish the game, THEN release it. Currently, it seems more and more developers release the game, then watch the forums as players run into the major bugs that show up, Then they rush a patch to fix those bugs, which probably introduces some more bugs into the game because they didn't thoroughly test it, and the cycle continues. (Actually, I have a feeling the programmers themselves do this intentionally, so as to ensure they always have work making fix patches. But that's probably just a crazy conspiracy theory)

[Prime32]

I don't know why everyone seem to think TP was trying to be LotR. Heck, everyone says everything is trying to be LotR with no real evidence to prove it.
Its moblins look like orcs, and ride boars. And then there's that shadow/fire boss... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnMfFaCO5ig&fmt=18) (which is fought in a mine!)

[Oslecamo]

Overly muscled, macho men are more disgusting and does more to keep women from gaming than female fanservice characters. Women are generally not attracted to such characters, can't identify with them and certainly don't have any desire to be them. The same applies to most men.

Completely suported! I'm a man and I can say with all my heart that I will rather look at the hot chick for 40-50 hours than the bag of muscles! Heck, when given a choice I've picked characters just because they were female instead of the ugly bearded guys!

Now on my own unpopular opinions:

1-Dawn of war is somewhat overrated. It basically boils down to anti infantry units and anti-tank units, with the anti-everything units in the middle.

2-Company of heros is very overated. So infantry can sudenly become da flash when they need to run away? so tank battles become DDR matches trying to get in the back of your enemy So tanks can freaking crush sandbags and houses and almost anything with their tracks BUT other units? Seriously WTF?

3-Dawn of War 2 looks like a cheap game I can find for free in the net except for the graphics. Seriously if they had dumbed it down any more you wouldn't even need to click a key anymore and it would be just a nice movie.

4-Resource gathering and management and building stuff are an important part of any RTS and actually properly reflect real world conflict. Soldiers always took whatever they could use for themselves from the battlefield. One of the main reasons to attack a place it's because they have something you want. Stealing your enemy resources behind their backs has ended battles right there. And everybody from the old spartans to the modern soldiers build fortifications and headquarterts and all kind of stuff in the battlefield to help manage their own resources and fight the enemy.

So if the RTS just allows you to get soldiers back at the rally point for free then it's really dumb. I'm looking at you DoW II. Since when have the SM being about swarming the enemy with an endless amount of mooks?

5-There's a LOT of garbage games out there nowadays that make DoW II actually look good.

6-Inovation has indeed been kinda stagnant. And no, DoW II din't help anything on the matter except on how to don't "inovate".

7-Blizzard is da best gaming company for PC evar. Of course, the best gaming company in general is Nintendo, but carrying my Wii around is harder than carrying my laptop.

8-Single player really matters.

9-FF should just be shot down and put out of it's misery.

Hmm, that's all I remember for now. Brain...Overload...

[warty goblin]

Completely suported! I'm a man and I can say with all my heart that I will rather look at the hot chick for 40-50 hours than the bag of muscles! Heck, when given a choice I've picked characters just because they were female instead of the ugly bearded guys!

Here we agree. I have no objections to muscular men per say, but if I'm going to spend the next thirty hours staring at a virtual backside, it might as well be a good looking one. Of course not everybody shares my tastes in virtual backsides, so diversity is good here.

Now on my own unpopular opinions:


1-Dawn of war is somewhat overrated. It basically boils down to anti infantry units and anti-tank units, with the anti-everything units in the middle.
Yep, the thing is some of us like that sort of gameplay much better than a soupy "everything sort of works against everything" feel.


2-Company of heros is very overated. So infantry can sudenly become da flash when they need to run away? so tank battles become DDR matches trying to get in the back of your enemy So tanks can freaking crush sandbags and houses and almost anything with their tracks BUT other units? Seriously WTF?
You actually can run over people with tanks, but it's rather hard to do, since the unit AI tends to move them out of the way. I've seen it happen on bridges quite a bit. And even if it's not perfect, it's still an improvement over tanks being brought to a complete halt by two trees with a single dude with a rifle standing between them. Something doesn't have to perfect to be better than what came before it.


3-Dawn of War 2 looks like a cheap game I can find for free in the net except for the graphics. Seriously if they had dumbed it down any more you wouldn't even need to click a key anymore and it would be just a nice movie.
Tell me of this game, I'm quite interested.


4-Resource gathering and management and building stuff are an important part of any RTS and actually properly reflect real world conflict. Soldiers always took whatever they could use for themselves from the battlefield. One of the main reasons to attack a place it's because they have something you want. Stealing your enemy resources behind their backs has ended battles right there. And everybody from the old spartans to the modern soldiers build fortifications and headquarterts and all kind of stuff in the battlefield to help manage their own resources and fight the enemy.
The key difference being very few battles actually featured tanks being rolled off the assembly line into battle. Leningrad comes to mind and probably Stalingrad, but that's really about it. Certainly nobody builds their factories a few miles at best from the enemy lines in the middle of a war- one of the reasons Russia was able to win WWII was precisely because it was able to evacuate the factories well away from the front lines. As to stealing resources, this is more about supply in the field than winning a war, at least at a battlefield level, and ergo would be better modeled by a model where units used resources to move and fight, but your resource pools were fixed at the beginning of the battle with only minimal chances for restocking them. Cutting off resources from enemy centers of production is of course important, but usually at a grand strategy level, not at battlefield scale.

Insofar as I can tell, the only real purpose of an economy in an RTS is to make damaging the enemy in battle meaningful, and resources/buildings are one way to do this. Fixed point buys at the beginning of a match are another, and honestly as abstractions go, probably much closer to reality.


So if the RTS just allows you to get soldiers back at the rally point for free then it's really dumb. I'm looking at you DoW II. Since when have the SM being about swarming the enemy with an endless amount of mooks?
Honestly this bothered me as well. Some sort of reinforcement in single player is fairly clearly neccessary, but having a limited number of drop pods at the start of every mission/earning more for accomplishing secondary objectives strikes me as a much better way to handle things.


5-There's a LOT of garbage games out there nowadays that make DoW II actually look good. I like DoWII, but definitely agree to the large number of bad games.


6-Inovation has indeed been kinda stagnant. And no, DoW II din't help anything on the matter except on how to don't "inovate". Honestly I thought DoWII was more like a series of good ideas with good to decent execution, but it actually did point a way forwards for the genre. Making unit losses in single player more meaningful, adding more choices to the campaign, and a few other things of that nature would go a very long ways towards creating a really quite interesting breed of tactical game. I'm thinking of a point buy system ala the tabletop at the beginning of every match would be majorly cool, with the afformentioned drop pod reinforcements. The basic combat though felt very good to me, since it made the squads actually interesting to micromanage. Don't get me wrong, DoWII is definitely flawed, but it tried something new, something that with a bit of polish and smart thinking could be really quite cool.


7-Blizzard is da best gaming company for PC evar. Of course, the best gaming company in general is Nintendo, but carrying my Wii around is harder than carrying my laptop.
Here we disagree really quite completely. Blizzard is, in my book, one of the most useless companies operating today which hasn't had an actual original idea for something like, oh, ten years now. I find it deeply fitting that they got bought up/merged with Activision, another company content to churn out endless Call of Duties/Guitar Heroes instead of try anything new. Really Activision/Blizzard should just change their motto to "Like EA used to be, except popular for some reason."


8-Single player really matters.
I'd go further. Single player is all there is for the vast majority of people in the vast majority of games. In terms of benefiting the maximum number of players, I'd like to see a lot more games that were either singleplayer only or multiplayer only. That way each group of people is kept happy, and we end up with far fewer games that half-ass do both.


9-FF should just be shot down and put out of it's misery. Amen, it and its entire ingrown genre.

[Lord of Rapture]

(Posted in the OP for clarity): Looks like some people don't understand what I meant in the first line...
What I meant to say is that you can debate, just don't let it get too heated.

Also:

7. Kingdom Hearts is a great series, and if it has to go out of its way to continue raping Final Fantasy canon in order to stay great, I couldn't care less.

[Bryn]

Quality http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/7739/notproportionate.png difficulty.
Quality http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/7739/notproportionate.png originality.
Linear ≠ bad.
'Real' can be brown and still look good.
Consoles and PC are all pretty much equal.

Using ≠ clearly makes my opinion right!

:smalltongue:

[Myatar_Panwar]

I love this thread.

1. I hate most turn based combat. It just bores to all hell. I can take grid based combat (such as FFTA) and alternatives (like Eternal Sonata. Too bad the dialog in that game was pure balls). Because of this, I hate most final fantasies.

2. Although not the most important, being visually appealing is pretty DAMN important for a video game. I cannot stress this enough. If someone tells you that graphics don't matter at all, then they are lying. Everyone likes looking at pretty things.

3. WoW is a good game. I don't play it anymore, but it is still good.

4. I would MUCH rather play as a character who is either a blank slate for the whole game, or whose personality is determined by your own actions in an RPG's case. I do not want to hear him talk. Ever. Let me imagine that for myself. Because of this, FF is once again pushed away. Though don't get me wrong. If I like the person then I am happy to play as him. For this reason I loved playing through Gears of War (as I enjoyed playing as Marcus), and Niko from GTA4 I especially liked. Though also for this reason I cannot play Devil May Cry. Dante just.... annoys me to no end.

I may have more later.

[Mirrinus]

Okay then...

I liked Scarlet Weather Rhapsody better than Immaterial and Missing Power, even if it's suppose to be less "tournament-friendly". I don't care if blocking incorrectly isn't penalized harshly anymore. I appreciate the larger stage sizes and the introduction of flight to capitalize on that extra space. The controls are more intuitive now that my buttons do what they're suppose to do regardless of distance to my opponent. I find the chaotic nature of the weather system adds a degree of novelty to each round. I actually enjoyed the card battle-like spellcard system more, especially because it offers customizability, even moreso when combined with alternate skill cards. I found the story mode spellcards to be more fun and balanced to play against. Pretty much the only thing I missed from IaMP is Remilia's third airdash.

Also, Majora's Mask was the best Zelda game, as others have said before me.

[Winterwind]

Mhhh... threads of this type invariably make me appear like a fanboy if I post my genuine opinion. Oh well...

1. StarCraft is actually vastly underrated. The only ones who rated it properly are the Koreans.

2. Nonetheless, WarCraft 3 is not an inferior game to StarCraft - it is just a very, very different game, that suggests an actually non-existent similarity between the two games by sharing a few concepts, but actually plays totally different. Apples and oranges.

[Keld Denar]

Vanguard: Saga of Heros was one of the coolest MMORPGs I've ever played. Unfortunately, it died two seperate, yet tragic, deaths...simultaneously. Vanguard had some really noval ideas that completely changed the party dynamics of healing and tanking. They just weren't very fine tuned yet. And their crafting and diplomacy systems were amazing and fun. And then it died...

The first death rests solely on Sony's money grubbing hangs. Going in and sacking most of the developement team several months after release and then allowing game content to remain stagnant for months with really no end game content went a long way to destroy it. It was buggy, but they were getting through the bugs in a relatively expedient fasion which I was quite impressed with. Various forums like TenTonHammer and Vanguardcrafters were active and actual developers responded to bugs and criticism. It was really molding into something with real ability to challenge WoW. Then it died. Lack of addressing bugs, no content updates, and the developement of some way to dupe gold absolutely destroyed everything. People fled the game in droves like islanders fleeing a volcanic eruption, flinging themselves into the sea rather than deal with what their beautiful world had become.

The other is the near instant gratification culture that WoW has produced in MMOs. Before, people played MMOs like EQ and DAoC for the play experience and companionship with their fellow geeks. WoW grew into a giant e-peen waving contest of who has shinier junk and less life. One of the elements I liked most about Vanguard was the crafting system. Crafting was wonderfully imersive and interesting. Unfortunately, it was also rather repetative, or at least leveling up was. You got almost no experience from actually making items to sell, instead most crafting experience was gained by doing repeatable work order quest. And it took a long while. I got my artificer to level 29 before I finally quit the game. I had tons of fun with it, and most other dedicated crafters I met in game loved it too. But crafting wasn't for everyone. Most people got to about level 5 in crafting and gave it up, because it was hard and a bit tedious. Now, I don't mean to wax elitiest, but it was cool to be one of the few people on the server who could help my guildies build houses. It was awesome forming trading partnerships with blacksmiths and trading cut gems for finished weapons. My Disciple didn't adventure much, but when he did, he did in style because he always had the best crafted gear for his level. I guess my point here is that WoW promoted an MMO culture of nearly instant gratification that destroyed the more slow-paced reward systems that had come before. Some of us like to shoot the breeze for a couple hours while whipping up another dozen iron horse shoes or granite house shingles.

So, with Vanguard gone, I've gone back to WoW. I feel like Rhianna...

Oh, and you wanna know what other game I play other than WoW? Warcraft 3. But I'm the single worst micromanager on the face of the planet, so I play Defense of the Ancients only. DotA is what PvP should be. 5v5 gameplay chosen from ~95 heros each with different play styles and item builds. Absolutely amazingly fun game to play alone or with 5 friends over ventrilo. Real PvP.

[Oslecamo]

warty goblin:I don't have time to properly answer your post now(gonna do so tomorrow), so I'll just let you this small video of what DoW II could have been and how somehow the game producers prefered to butcher it up in CoH in space: now with even less troops and explosions!

http://www.counterfeitculture.com/commentary/behind-the-scenes-of-what-dawn-of-war-2-was-supposed-to-be/

That's how I expected a space marine strike force to work! Why gods why did Relic want to put so much realism in a sci-fi fantasy game?

[Killersquid]

Oh, this will not end well.

WoW is fun.
Most JRPGS suck majorly. The Tales games are great though.
The Average WRPGS will outperform the Average JRPGS in everything, however, the best JRPGS are easily on par with the best WRPGS.
The Halo Story is awful and generic.
Starcraft and Warcraft "borrowed" from 40k and Warhammer Fantasy (respectively). This doesn't make their stories less awesome, or the games any less awesome.
Turn based RPGs are fine if they contain some semblance of strategy.
FF VII was overrated.
Actually, a lot of Square Enix games are overrated.

Start Rage.

Edit: Oh, and the only reason PC gaming lives is due to Blizzard and Valve.

[Faulty]

Starcraft and Warcraft "borrowed" from 40k and Warhammer Fantasy (respectively). This doesn't make their stories less awesome, or the games any less awesome.

Not trolling, but this really isn't an opinion so much as fact.

[RPGuru1331]

I like the folks saying "Graphics matter for their style". But then, I've spent the last couple days worth of game time juggling Dwarf Fortress, Soul Nomad, Dawn of War, and Spelunkey, which runs several graphical gamuts. Anyone who thinks that prettier automatically equates to anything but, perhaps, sales, though, is sorely mistaken.


Not trolling, but this really isn't an opinion so much as fact.
Warcraft, yes. Starcraft.. no, they just both stole from the same author. And both improved on him, in my opinion.


The other is the near instant gratification culture that WoW has produced in MMOs. Before, people played MMOs like EQ and DAoC for the play experience and companionship with their fellow geeks. WoW grew into a giant e-peen waving contest of who has shinier junk and less life.
:psyduck: That completely mismatches my experience.

[Kroy]

Paper Mario 3 (Super Paper Mario) is a disgrace to the Paper Mario series, the best video games of all time.

[Knaight]

Turn based battle systems are excellent.

Card based battle systems are excellent.

You seriously need to track down a copy of Baiten Kaidos. The first one, not the second, although it might be good. Now to the rest:
1) Most of the major game companies are routinely overtaken, in graphics, gameplay, and innovation, by indie companies with very few people.
2) Lightnings Shadow is better than Worms.
3) The Wii is not moving backwards.
4) Turn based battle systems can be excellent. They can also suck.
5) Most D&D based games were terrible.
6) Nethack wasn't all that great.
7) Starcraft II is probably going to be good.
8) Artistic style is way more important in graphics than technical capabilities. It doesn't matter how many polygons you use if the characters look dumb, you have the colors brown, grey, and muzzle flash, and most of the backgrounds are identical.
9) Good audio is typically more important than good visual.
10) There are good three dimensional sonic games. Heroes was not among them.
11) DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold was better than DROD: King Dugans Dungeon. DROD: City beneath is better than both of them put together.
12) In DROD, Tars are harder to fight than Muds. The perception that two of them somewhat merged together are harder than either is correct.
13) Metroid Prime II was good overall.
14) Flaagra is a more fun fight than Metroid Prime in Metroid Prime I. So is Meta Ridley.

Most of these are pretty obscure, but whatever.

[Tensu]

Its moblins look like orcs, and ride boars. And then there's that shadow/fire boss... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnMfFaCO5ig&fmt=18) (which is fought in a mine!)

There are no Moblins in TP. There are Bokoblins, which where introduced in WW, and there where Bulbins, a more militant subspecies of bokoblin, and they didn't look like orcs in any significant way. and boars have been the face of evil in the Zelda series since game 1. any boars are more likely a reference to Gannon's porcine features than LotR.

And Pyrus doesn't look like a Balrog if that's what you're implying. He looks like a possessed Goron.

You're looking at the game through LotR-colored glasses, but there's a perfectly Zelda-continuity explanation for all of it.

[DeathQuaker]

Oh, it will be fun to get some things off my chest.

Suikoden: Viktor and Flik must die. Horribly, painfully, slowly, agonizingly, and with lots and lots of blood. Suikoden II was a good game, but not that great, and Luca Blight was a crappy villain. Suikoden IV was not in fact the spawn of Satan and was in fact a pretty decent RPG that just happened to have an unfortunate movement and random encounter rate.

Neverwinter Nights 2: Is actually fun. The toolset has a much better interface than NWN1's, and area design is fun and relatively easy (if, yes, time consuming), and the endless options it provides makes it heads and shoulders preferable to use over the older toolset. Plus oh my lord the way you can set up conditionals in conversations is beautiful.

KotOR2 (fully patched, mind) was much better than KotOR1, and its ending was fine.

The Sims/Sims 2 is a fantastic, brilliant game, and not for 13 year old wannabe clothing designers.

Final Fantasy VII is a pretty lousy RPG, and one of the few games that nearly had me tossing my controller out the window. The characters are bland, the dialogue is dreadful, and Sephiroth is one of the most awful, cliched villains I have ever seen in my entire life.

Fallout 3: I LOVE Moira Brown.

General: I enjoy Western RPGS AND JRPGs. And that's okay.

General: Playing evil is, except in extremely rare circumstances, not fun or satisfying.

General: There is no such thing as hardcore versus casual. Just people with fragile identity issues versus people who just want to have fun.

And the MOST unpopular gaming/gamer opinion: I am entitled to my opinion, my preferred play style is equally as valid as anyone else's (even if it is completely different from another given gamer's), and nothing anyone says will ever, ever change that. And it's okay and even a good thing to be respectful of other people's differing opinions once in awhile. It is possible to discuss games without calling someone a noob or talking down to the people who are in fact your peers.

There. I feel better now. :smallsmile:

[Jamin]

I don't play m rated games and get made fun of for it all the time

[warty goblin]

There are no Moblins in TP. There are Bokoblins, which where introduced in WW, and there where Bulbins, a more militant subspecies of bokoblin, and they didn't look like orcs in any significant way. and boars have been the face of evil in the Zelda series since game 1. any boars are more likely a reference to Gannon's porcine features than LotR.

And Pyrus doesn't look like a Balrog if that's what you're implying. He looks like a possessed Goron.

You're looking at the game through LotR-colored glasses, but there's a perfectly Zelda-continuity explanation for all of it.

Most LoTR clones have perfectly valid in-universe explanations for why things happen to work out pretty much exactly the way they did in LoTR. I'm not saying LoZ is or is not an LoTR clone mind you, merely that an explanation is not, to my mind anyway, proof to the contrary.

[RS14]

One word: Downtown. Still, your opinion.
Grand Theft Auto III bores me, and I have no interest in GTA IV. It annoys me that hardly anyone remembers about GTA I and II (which were pretty fun but not stellar either).

Hey, I do. Mostly because I'm too cheap to buy many games.

Battle for Wesnoth is overrated. For a free game, it's nice, and I play it occasionally, but it's terribly unforgiving.

Any flight simulator that can be played with a gamepad is unworthy of the name.

Steam is DRM, although I think that's more of an unpopular truth.

Good graphics matter. Realistic graphics aren't necessarily good. A game should look attractive, and can do so even when sacrificing the realism . Interface trumps graphics. I play nethack in ASCII, rather than with tiles for this reason.

[Cúchulainn]

Fallout 3: I LOVE Moira Brown.

She's obviously meant to be an annoying character, she's the ONLY ONE who survives the Megaton explosion, and she's still all cheery and with the same bloody voice despite ghouls sounding all scratchy and stuff. Man that made me rage.


General: There is no such thing as hardcore versus casual. Just people with fragile identity issues versus people who just want to have fun.

Casual detected.


EDIT: DAMN YOU SERVERRRRR!

[warty goblin]

She's obviously meant to be an annoying character, she's the ONLY ONE who survives the Megaton explosion, and she's still all cheery and with the same bloody voice despite ghouls sounding all scratchy and stuff. Man that made me rage.



Casual detected.


EDIT: DAMN YOU SERVERRRRR!

Indeed. I don't particularly like attaching value judgements to the term, but there's pretty clearly a divide in terms of complexity somewhere along the line. Put it this way, I've yet to find a game that was too complex for me to be able to play. Toss somebody who plays Bejewelled at, say, Galactic Civilizations II though and I'll bet most of 'em don't do so hot. I picked up that game without even a tutorial, although I'd hardly call myself a pro at it, I can certainly understand the thing.

[Myatar_Panwar]

Steam is DRM, although I think that's more of an unpopular truth.

This is true. I think most people who are willing to listen to reason will agree with you too.

Its really pretty simple. You buy games from steam which have to be run while steam is on. A restriction.

But the point of Steam is that its a kind of DRM that most people are just fine with. This is very important. People accept Steam's conditions for the services it provides, and the good far outweighs the bad.

[snoopy13a]

My favorite Final Fanasty game is Final Fanasty 9.

I liked Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link

The only thing I liked about Final Fanasty 10 was blitzball.

[Tensu]

Most LoTR clones have perfectly valid in-universe explanations for why things happen to work out pretty much exactly the way they did in LoTR. I'm not saying LoZ is or is not an LoTR clone mind you, merely that an explanation is not, to my mind anyway, proof to the contrary.

you know, there where stories of dwarves and elves centuries before LotR, Right?

because sometimes I get the feeling that people forget that.

here's one: People who think a mature gamer is someone who only plays M games. no, that's what a 13-year old with lenient/inattentive parents plays. A mature gamer would be one who doesn't judge a game by rating, and is capable of enjoying both games targeted at children and ones that have more blood and gore than a scantily clad, big-bosomed woman could shake an oversized machine gun at.

[Johnny Blade]

Heh. I had really high hopes about that game, but after playing the demo I was sorely disappointed. And everything I've heard so far says that the rest of the game isn't much better.
Assuming the demo only took you through the first village or so, it actually gets worse. A lot worse.

Now, the plot that you're following from the get-go is handled decently. As in, it avoids many - although definitely not all - clichés, offers you different paths to follow, and has a nice and actually funny conclusion.
However, it isn't long before a second plot is tacked onto this. It starts like this: You go to a church where many heroes meet. You're chosen to save the world.
It does not get better.

The real bummer, however, is how combat is handled. There are three interesting battles in the game.
The rest can be divided into three groups:
1. Throw some respawning groups of enemies at the party. That's actually somewhat Diablo-like, except that it totally sucks. Now, I'm not a huge Diablo-fan, but at least it could keep you entertained. This game? Not so. Mainly because it's so easy. Honestly, in one area, you'd be jumped by randomly spawning harpies nonstop. I usually did nothing when this happened, just watched my dudes kill them without taking a scratch.
2. Have the group hack away at one boss monster which does not move and can not be gone around. This is exactly as much fun as it sounds like. Although, I should probably mention that magic and special attacks took quite a while to recharge, so it always came down to sitting back, monitoring health/breath/mana bars, and hoping that the dice like you more than the AI.
3. Just make it ridiculously hard. There are two notable battles like that. One is an optional boss fight that can only be won by dumb luck. The other is the not so optional final confrontation, which...can only be won if you have a ****load of potions. Luckily, you can get those off of respawning enemies. So, if you feel like spending hours killing those, that final battle is probably manageable. I cheated.

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned any companions or NPCs yet. That's because they're all totally forgettable. Honestly, I only remember one name from this game, that of a companion you get early on. I remember it because said companion had the rare combination of a totally inept writer and a brutally annoying voice actor. Said character would randomly start giggling in the middle of a fight. Then she would usually be killed. Alas, it never sticks in this game.
The rest of the cast is boring, has been seen thousand times and usually better, and oh yeah, your companions have about 10 lines each.

Damn, I hate this game. Did I mention that it's copy protection damaged my system when I right-clicked on the exe file?
And that was an original copy. Glad I didn't actually pay for it, but if I had, I'd have wanted my money back.

[FatJose]

Funny how it takes LotR being made into movies for people to notice and complain. Really? It took that long?
-He has pointy ears.
-He fights with sword, shield and bow.
-He fights an evil wizard who turns into a boar monster. (note- Look up Orc in your 3.5 Monster Manual if you have a copy)
-All humanoid enemies who wield swords and aren't lizards or obscured by armor have names that contain "oblin" and usually have large jaw fangs in all games that monster soldiers appear. I.E. Moblins in Link's Awakening

This would have been said about Ocarina if it had been made after Twilight instead of before. "Wow. he starts out living in a forest village with little people...suspicious"

Gripes-
-Can't have fun playing WoW
-I find the Neverwinter Nights campaigns to be long-winded and boring. That includes 2. (Still I bought all expansions even though I will most likely never play through them. I'm dumb.)
-I liked Sonic Unleashed for the 360, especially the Werehog. Felt like I was playing as Knuckles if he actually had a moveset except no gliding.

[valadil]

I hated Halo before it was cool to hate Halo. The *only* thing any game in the Halo series does well is provide a lan party on minimal equipment.

FPS games before Half-Life sucked. Most of the ones after Half-Life suck too.

I have yet to enjoy a single Blizzard game. I might have liked Diablo, if it was anything more than a shiny version of Angband.

Age of Empires 2 is my favorite RTS.

I'm still trying to figure out how RPGs justify calling themselves roleplaying. They're tactical combat simulators with a side of choose your own adventure books. Sometimes the choose your own adventure part is limited to naming your character.

And now for the least popular opinion, I bought just one next gen console and it was a PS3. (99% of the games on 360 and PS3 are the same. As I already mentioned, Halo sucks, so that wasn't going to win me over. Little Big Planet, on the other hand, was a point in the PS3's favor.)

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Neverwinter Nights 2: Is actually fun. The toolset has a much better interface than NWN1's, and area design is fun and relatively easy (if, yes, time consuming), and the endless options it provides makes it heads and shoulders preferable to use over the older toolset. Plus oh my lord the way you can set up conditionals in conversations is beautiful.
I've never worked with the toolset, but I wholeheartedly agree that it is fun. There's a great deal of customization for characters (But then what would you expect from a game based on D&D?), the story's not as bad as some people say (At least in the OC. I think most people can agree that Mask of the Betrayer's story was its best feature.), and the camera is not nearly as bad as others claim (You just need to be patient with it.)

KotOR2 (fully patched, mind) was much better than KotOR1, and its ending was fine.
I agree. The character options were upgraded significantly, so it felt less like D&D shoehorned into Star Wars, the outfits looked fantastic, the characters were awesome, and the philosophical concepts it touched on were brilliant. While I think the ending could have been a tad clearer, I think that it's better than what had been originally planned, which upon reading it seems a tad surreal.

The Sims/Sims 2 is a fantastic, brilliant game, and not for 13 year old wannabe clothing designers.
Amen to that! I spent HOURS playing The Sims several years ago, especially when the Makin' Magic expansion came out. I haven't had the time to get into the Sims 2, but it looks and sounds like everything I loved about The Sims with some pretty damn awesome enhancements. I don't know what to make of the rumors I've heard about a Sims 3 coming out. You'd think The Sims 2 would have just as long a life as its predecessor.

Fallout 3: I LOVE Moira Brown.
I do too. She is slightly offbeat, but I think that's just fine. It's a nucelar wasteland, you'd have to have a few screws loose to avoid sinking into despair. Her chipper attitude is refreshing when compared to the cynicism and apathy you encounter elsewhere. If there were proper romantic options in the game, I'd love for her to be one!

General: I enjoy Western RPGS AND JRPGs. And that's okay.
I am a firm believer in WRPGS, having played what I think are some of the best of them. I've never really had the opportunity to play a JRPG, since I mostly game on the PC, which doesn't have many JRPG options. I've seen my friend play a Final Fantasy game though, and it looked pretty intense. I'd love to try a JRPG sometime in my life. I don't see why the dichotomy has to be an all out enmity. They each have their merits, and I play my WRPGS like they're interactive movies anyway, so it's not much of a change for me.

General: Playing evil is, except in extremely rare circumstances, not fun or satisfying.
Finally! Someone who understands! I've tried doing evil characters before, and each time, it's always left me feeling horrible.

General: There is no such thing as hardcore versus casual. Just people with fragile identity issues versus people who just want to have fun.
I concur. I don't think think casual gamers even call themselves that. It's just an accolade applied by the "hardcore" players to make themselves feel important.

And the MOST unpopular gaming/gamer opinion: I am entitled to my opinion, my preferred play style is equally as valid as anyone else's (even if it is completely different from another given gamer's), and nothing anyone says will ever, ever change that. And it's okay and even a good thing to be respectful of other people's differing opinions once in awhile. It is possible to discuss games without calling someone a noob or talking down to the people who are in fact your peers.
Indeed. Usually the ones who call people n00bs are the ones who are n00bs themselves.

There. I feel better now. :smallsmile:
Me too.

[Phase]

Amen to that! I spent HOURS playing The Sims several years ago, especially when the Makin' Magic expansion came out. I haven't had the time to get into the Sims 2, but it looks and sounds like everything I loved about The Sims with some pretty damn awesome enhancements. I don't know what to make of the rumors I've heard about a Sims 3 coming out. You'd think The Sims 2 would have just as long a life as its predecessor.

Rumors?

...

Um... about those... (http://thesims3.ea.com/)

[revolver kobold]

General: Playing evil is, except in extremely rare circumstances, not fun or satisfying.



Playing evil is amazingly satisfying. Especially in games like Black & White.

[Myatar_Panwar]

I think evil is only truly satisfying when the game was built specifically for it.

In games like Oblivion or Fallout 3 I can enjoy being evil for only so long. Usually I end up killing a whole town only to be hit with waves of loneliness and guilt.

[Thane of Fife]

You know how it's sort of a classic idea how a heroic figure slips into darkness, justifying his evil deeds to himself as he commits them? Playing an evil character in a game is like that for me, but in reverse - "Oh, I can selflessly rescue those innocent children; my character's not a complete jerk!" And before I know it, I'm playing a paladin. I just can't do it!

[Enlong]

Shadow the Hedgehog was not a horrible game. The way they added aliens to Shadow's backstory bugged me, but aside from that, it was an enjoyable run-and-shoot game with an enjoyable number of branching story choices, an okay karma-meter thingamadoodle, and a fun final boss. Oh, and you get a gun that launches Omochao. :smallamused: I unironically enjoyed it, until I found out that the Internet wants me to feel bad for liking it. :smallannoyed: It was like the Inheritance books all over again. Well, screw you, Internet! I will decide what I like! Because I am a man! *punch*

Also: I enjoy Final Fantasy IV, VI, and VII, despite having only gotten a chance to play a mildly damaged version of VII and not getting very far, and see no reason for there to be a blood feud between them.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Exactly. If I wanted to be evil, I'd play Overlord.

[Jamin]

FPS is the most overrated Genre ever
Fire Emblems 9 and 10 were too short
Girls need to put on more clothes like 5 or 6 more clothes
linear games tend to have better stories

[Innis Cabal]

No grand theft auto game was ever fun, just a time sink.

Final Fantasy was a good game, one of the best RPG's ever and re-invented the genre in a time that it needed it.

Final Fantasy Tactics was easily the best RPG game ever. It story makes all other RPGs look like chump change.

Halo wasn't an awful game. Its not a great game, but its not awful.

Eternal Darkness was awful

Innovative games are gernally not all that great

Starcraft is not the best RTS, its not even second or third

Star Wars games are never good, ever. No not even that one.

Half Life and all its side stories are trite and boring.

I don't care how awsome the graphics are, sports games have always been lame and haven't changed from their base concept since the Atari.

Racing games are not only boring, but a complete waste of money.

Quest 64 was awsome.

[Inhuman Bot]

Playing evil is amazingly satisfying. Especially in games like Black & White.

Argument detected. Must... purge!

Also, why is both liking WoW and disliking WoW seen as an unpopular opinion? Just curious to why people see it those ways.

Zelda isn't that good. It's really the same game released multipule times, and it doesn't even have that good of a plot.

Also, Shadow of the colousus was an allright game, but the only vauge backround story seems like sort of lazy.

[Drascin]

Okay then...

I liked Scarlet Weather Rhapsody better than Immaterial and Missing Power, even if it's suppose to be less "tournament-friendly". I don't care if blocking incorrectly isn't penalized harshly anymore. I appreciate the larger stage sizes and the introduction of flight to capitalize on that extra space. The controls are more intuitive now that my buttons do what they're suppose to do regardless of distance to my opponent. I find the chaotic nature of the weather system adds a degree of novelty to each round. I actually enjoyed the card battle-like spellcard system more, especially because it offers customizability, even moreso when combined with alternate skill cards. I found the story mode spellcards to be more fun and balanced to play against. Pretty much the only thing I missed from IaMP is Remilia's third airdash.


I will have to agree with you here. I dislike the weather system (well, not the system per se. Just a couple of the climates. Playing as Youmu and suddenly finding yourself in "no melee" weather isn't fun), but everything else from SWR I like. Especially the fact that I can trust my buttons to do what I ask of them - I've always disliked fighting games where buttons do different things depending on your distance to the enemy.

In that vein, another unpopular opinion, at least among shooter fans - yes, I like Touhou better than CAVE shooters. I like the relaxed pace and the immensely more stylish presentation (this ties with the "style before graphic power" argument from before. Newer CAVE games are really defined and detailed. Touhou is pretty. Gues which one I prefer?). No, I'm not a complete n00b or whatever you want to call me for it.

[Berserk Monk]

Here's an unpopular gaming option: any Square Enix game after FF7. If I had a nickle for every male character that looked like a chick...

[Tensu]

Zelda isn't that good. It's really the same game released multipule times, and it doesn't even have that good of a plot.


No, it really isn't. Every Zelda game offers something old and something new, and each one sets it apart in some way. It's true the story has been a little lacking, though Gannondorf has been showing some long-overdue character development in recent games. there was also a little more story than usual in the oracle cycle.

it's time for the most contriversial opinion of all:

SEQUELS ROCK! *gasps!*:smalleek:

that's right, I genuinely enjoy sequels. Why? Because I don't look at them as a new game or as a bastardization, but as a continuation of an old game. That is, the first game didn't end. I always drag my feet towards the end of a game and it can be nice to know that not even the singing of the fat lady means it's over.

[JabberwockySupafly]

My unpopular opinions:


1. The Shin Megami Tensei series, and it's spin-offs (Digital Devil Saga, Devil Summoner & Persona) are far more enjoyable & far superior to anything Square has put out before or after it's merger with Enix. The characters and stories are more entertaining & engrossing, I find the artistic styles to be more appealing, the level of customization for your character/party/demons is incredibly in-depth for the most part, the level of change you institute via your actions is infinitely larger compared to the railroad plot of virtually every SE game save probably Chronotrigger, and the strategy involved in combat is well thought-out & does not hold your hand like most, if not all, SE games. It forces you to construct strategies and exploit enemy weaknesses, and there is no "I Win" button like Knights of Round or Eden. (Ex: take a demon with a weakness to wind into a fight against Garuda and watch in horror as your party is wiped out, but take a Wind Immune or Resistant demon in with a Lightning based attack, and watch Garuda fry like a chicken).

That being said, I still enjoy the FF series, and while most of them are incredibly over-rated, they can still be fun at times, which leads me to my next unpopular opinion: You don't have to choose a favourite FF. It's quite acceptable to simply like the series as a whole.

Opinion the Third: There is nothing wrong with sitting down and playing Ico or Shadow of the Colossus for a few hours and then switch over to something a bit more mainstream like WoW or Gears of War. I do it all the time. Not everyone has to pick a side in the Mainstream Vs. Cult Classic war. I own a copy of Psychonauts and a copy of Burnout: Revenge, and don't feel like I owe anyone my loyalty for purchasing those games.

Regarding WoW: People who gripe they made the game too easy, and that "any noob can get good gear now" need to sit back, take a deep breath, and realise it's just a video game. Do you honestly think after you log out, that you can head to your local bar/pub/night club, walk up to some random skirt (love that term, skirt. Not used enough these days) and say "Hey, baby. I've got a level 80 Death Knight with a Demise and a full Valorous Scourgebone set" and expect her to swoon? No, she's going to just laugh at you, best case scenario. Worst case, you're going to leave wet from the drink she throws on you, and sore from when her boyfriend pounds you into a sticky substance resembling taffy. It's a game, Blizzard realised people have social lives, spouses, friends and jobs. In order to facilitate that fact, they simplified the game so people could enjoy Azeroth, but could also enjoy Earth. I kind of hope this isn't as unpopular an opinion as I feel it is.

[Cúchulainn]

SEQUELS ROCK! *gasps!*:smalleek:

that's right, I genuinely enjoy sequels. Why? Because I don't look at them as a new game or as a bastardization, but as a continuation of an old game. That is, the first game didn't end. I always drag my feet towards the end of a game and it can be nice to know that not even the singing of the fat lady means it's over.

You must get really, really depressed nowadays. When I found out that Deus Ex 3 was going to go back in time to before JC and have some faceless mook as main character I cried very unmanly tears, then I lashed out at everyone around me and started drinking. Sure I look forward to sequels as much as the next guy but having any hope for the quality of them in this generation of gaming is setting yourself up for a long fall into the 8-bit spike trap.

[LurkerInPlayground]

Here's an unpopular gaming option: any Square Enix game after FF7. If I had a nickle for every male character that looked like a chick...
The Final Fantasy franchise has been circling the drain for some time now.

[LiteYear]

Well, here are mine.

- Both GBA portable Megaman series (Megaman Battle Network and Megaman Zero) are, in general, good games and worthy of the Megaman franchise.

- Castlevania: Symphony of the night is severely lacking and the only reason it gets the accolades it does is because it was the first "Castleroid", and was released on a popular console.

[Oslecamo]

Yep, the thing is some of us like that sort of gameplay much better than a soupy "everything sort of works against everything" feel.

Good. Just a shame it makes for games that simply aren't competitive-multiplayer worthy. And playing RTSs against humans it's that much more interesting that against computers.



You actually can run over people with tanks, but it's rather hard to do, since the unit AI tends to move them out of the way. I've seen it happen on bridges quite a bit. And even if it's not perfect, it's still an improvement over tanks being brought to a complete halt by two trees with a single dude with a rifle standing between them. Something doesn't have to perfect to be better than what came before it.
[QUOTE=warty goblin;5949468]

Two words: Red Alert. Where tanks can not only crush infantry effeciently(instead of infantry being some kind of ninja who can dodge incoming vehicles but not rockets/mortars/grenades), but they can even crush lesser vehicles.

I like consistency. Either tanks can crush stuff smaller than them or they can't crush anything at all.

[QUOTE=warty goblin;5949468]
Tell me of this game, I'm quite interested.

Gonna look for it. Some 2D flash strategy game.



The key difference being very few battles actually featured tanks being rolled off the assembly line into battle. Leningrad comes to mind and probably Stalingrad, but that's really about it. Certainly nobody builds their factories a few miles at best from the enemy lines in the middle of a war- one of the reasons Russia was able to win WWII was precisely because it was able to evacuate the factories well away from the front lines.

Altough indeed you want to keep factories away from the frontline, siege units in the medieval times were built normally right in the battlefield. Recruiting people as you marched to fight wasn't very uncommon. And takin whatever you find at the battlefield and turning it in a weapon(like recycling enemy tanks) is a basis of combat. I'll give it to CoH to allow you to pick up enemy special weapons.



As to stealing resources, this is more about supply in the field than winning a war, at least at a battlefield level, and ergo would be better modeled by a model where units used resources to move and fight, but your resource pools were fixed at the beginning of the battle with only minimal chances for restocking them. Cutting off resources from enemy centers of production is of course important, but usually at a grand strategy level, not at battlefield scale.

Actually, no. Every army has to carry some supplies of their own. And just before the battle starts they have to leave them somewhere, generally at a improvised camp relatively near to the battlefield. Normall also togheter with the riches and strategic plans and other important stuff that would slow you down when trying to kill the enemy. Dodging the enemy army and assaulting said camp where the goodies are installed will seriously cripple said enemy army. Itwas a common strategy in the middle ages, and it is still used today. Sieges also come to mind. Isolate the enemy army of the outside world, then wait for them to shrivel up and die. Why attack the enemy armed forces when you can attack the ones who make them tick?



Insofar as I can tell, the only real purpose of an economy in an RTS is to make damaging the enemy in battle meaningful, and resources/buildings are one way to do this. Fixed point buys at the beginning of a match are another, and honestly as abstractions go, probably much closer to reality.


Economy management also gives an incentive for players to quickly expand to secure more resources for themselves. And since quick expansion implies overextendin your forces it also means risk. Keep too close and you end up outresourced, but spread too much and you'll fall like a castle of cards.

It also allows you to choose between trying to tech up or investing in


CoH and DoW(specially II) on the other hand have such resource systems that even if you're cornered in a little corner you can still push the enemy back just by building anti-units to your enemies while the enemy can't properly use his resource advantage because of stupidly low population caps.



Honestly I thought DoWII was more like a series of good ideas with good to decent execution, but it actually did point a way forwards for the genre. Making unit losses in single player more meaningful, adding more choices to the campaign, and a few other things of that nature would go a very long ways towards creating a really quite interesting breed of tactical game. I'm thinking of a point buy system ala the tabletop at the beginning of every match would be majorly cool, with the afformentioned drop pod reinforcements. The basic combat though felt very good to me, since it made the squads actually interesting to micromanage. Don't get me wrong, DoWII is definitely flawed, but it tried something new, something that with a bit of polish and smart thinking could be really quite cool.


Well this is something that just has been hapening too much. Companies rush in and en up releasing ames with serious flaws. You see that's what I ike about Blizzard over other companies, they take their time to properly develop their games, and then they properly patch them up as problems arise.


Really Activision/Blizzard should just change their motto to "Like EA used to be, except popular for some reason."

And that's the "some reason" you still seem to don't understand. Blizzard cares about making quality products wich you can keep playing for years whitout them geting too old (aka SC and WC3), offers great modding tools and suport whereas other companies force you to install several third party programs that only slow down the game(again, DoW II). Do they sacrifice inovation? Probably. But hey, that's for what they give out the modding tools to their games. Inovate yourself to your heart's content!

It's a series of minor details most people don't notice but greatly increase the enjoyment for the players.

Just look at Warhammer online. It's inovative, and many people said it wold replace Wow as the top MMORPG, but a series of small flaws ends up crippling the play experience in the long run, so Wow keeps being more popular.




I'd go further. Single player is all there is for the vast majority of people in the vast majority of games. In terms of benefiting the maximum number of players, I'd like to see a lot more games that were either singleplayer only or multiplayer only. That way each group of people is kept happy, and we end up with far fewer games that half-ass do both.


Altough I think that every multiplayer game should come, I must say amen to that. There's really too much focus on the multiplayer nowadays. Like the other guy said if I'm playing a computer game it's probably because I don't feel like(can't hanging out with people right now!

Innis Cabal: So what do you think it's the best RTS out there? I'm sure it's an unpopular opinion, c'mon, share it with us:smalltongue:

[Neithan]

I like Halo. I think the levels look nice and the background story is interesting. Maybe level design and storytelling not so much, but I still enjoy it.

And Morrowind was just awful. Many faces looked horrible, but it didn't matter, as no NPC had any trace of character depth and personalty. It was all like aimlessly running through a huge world reading signpost. You can't call it talking to charactrs.

Also, I like FF10 and highly anticipate FF13. And I think I really want to play FF12 when I can get my hands on it.

Oh yeah, and GTA is crap.

[Quincunx]

A multiplayer game which segregates its servers by location, and by extension games which don't but which are unplayable with intercontinental latency*, suck. I have made my friends on the _World Wide_ Web and I would like to put said friends into the same game without ridiculous latency, proxy servers, quasi-legal** imports of original game discs keyed to different regions, and other hoops jumped through so many times they are beginning to feel normal. All of that, just for reference of scale, was to unite half a dozen people.

*This is more insulting than games with obscene hardware requirements. You are expected to provide your own hardware to the game standard. If your corner of the country's infrastructure can't support the necessary connection speed, though, there's nothing you can do to improve that.

**Legal to export from country of imprint A.
Legal to import to country of installation B.
Not legal to buy or sell imports in country of current residence C.
Thus, legal, maybe even enshrined as a right to free movement within country C's international circle, but country C would still be annoyed.

[EDIT: I forgot a hugely unpopular local opinion: It IS possible to play DotA without so much as an allusion to Basshunter. The instant I learn to roll my Rs at the end of syllables, I'm letting each and every one of them know how i feel about this issue. . .]

[Gnomish Wanderer]

MMo's are so massively overrated! They're fun for only a small amount of time but then bore you to hell! Even if you can find a group of people to get on with regualrly it never quite feels as interactive as larping or tabletop games, both which also actually requires imagination and thinking instead of clicking buttons. I hate how riled up people are over these kinds of games!

Resident Evil 4 and 5 are awful representations of RE as a whole. They may make ok games by themselves but by bastardizing the series it makes them barely worth the time to play them. I would rather play flash games, I get about the same amount of satisfaction from them. I want the puzzle/survival horror and neat non-magical storyline like they used to.

GTA is only fun when I'm feeling OCD and want to show my spouse how to drive correctly using a PS2 remote.

DDR and Guitar Hero may be a lot of fun, but no one cares how good you are at it. So what if you can beat every song on Expert/Challenge? It's much more fun tuning your weight, dexterity, and musical talent with those games than focusing on how great you are and trying to show off. Also it really does improve rhythm and help with ambidexterity, so those people who are so angry trying to tell Guitar Heroists that they should learn a real guitar while they chose not to let music in their lives on such an interactive level can just learn to live and let live already.

[cha0s4a11]

Strategic (Ogre Battle... most recent example that comes to mind sadly) and/or Tactical (Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Disgaea) RPG's are generally better than normal RPGs whether PC or Console.

FFX was pretty good. Way better than VII, VIII, and IX, and in the ballpark of VI.

The team who came up with the concept for FFX-2 should be fired. Out of a cannon. Into the Sun. (Not all that unpopular, but still).

For RPGs turn-based is better than real-time because it's the character that has the Dexterity/Speed/etc. score, not me.

Chrono Cross was a pretty good game, though it really shouldn't require the player to read an online document detailing all of the different timelines/possible timelines/etc. to work out what the heck was going on, and after a bit, it's hard to avoid getting the impression that the multiverse would have been better off if the protagonist decided to sleep in (more) that day. Chrono Trigger was still better.

Warcraft 3 is pretty good for its custom maps. DOTA is crap, Battleships, Castle Fight, and Uther's Party are much better.

[Cúchulainn]

{Scrubbed}

[Winthur]

1. Fallout 3 is amazing, but I'm not planning to get Fallout 1 or 2, partly because they don't sell it where I'm living, and partly because I think turn-based combat for modern gunplay is heresy.

You just forgot the face of your father.
There's so much more to Fallout series than fighting. You can play the whole game without fighting. And even then, the turn-based system and SPECIAL is completely awesome. You can't ditch a game just based on the fact you're so close-minded on the matter. Given that the action is measured in seconds, it's justified to have your character shoot once a turn. Later on, it works like a breeze, and requires some actual tactics. And if turn-based combat for modern gunplay is wrong for you, well... you just set yourself for a great bash from Jagged Alliance and maybe X-Com fans.

Just PLAY Fallout, without any prejudice. It will be thousands of times better than Fallout 3. This game has too good storyline and replayability to just diss it.

Oh, and console fanatics can go straight to hell for me. :smalltongue: You won't play any (real time) strategy game (Civ: Rev? Don't make me laugh), any good old cRPG, and playing FPS on consoles is so mind-boggling I'd like to kill myself.



I don't care how awsome the graphics are, sports games have always been lame and haven't changed from their base concept since the Atari.

FIFA 96 anyone? Or maybe 98 or 99?

I love offtopic. :)

[Toastkart]

Even though its more of an rtt, Mechcommander Gold was a better rts than most of the rts that are out there.

The Halo series had a pretty good story and were good games overall. That doesn't mean they don't have their problems, most of them caused by more consideration being given to multiplayer than single player.

FFVII's story was bland, full of plot holes, and sephiroth was not a great villain. The gameplay, on the other hand, was kind of fun.

FFIX was a better final fantasy than most of the others.

On the debate of wrpg and jrpg, it largely depends on what I'm in the mood for. jrpg's are like reading novels with a set main character and cast, and I'm just along for the gameplay. wrpg's are like choose your own adventure novels where I am the main character and get to play out the story.

wow is a boring grindfest. Rather, it was fun until I realized that it did nothing but feed into an addictive cycle akin to the produce more/consume more to produce more/ consume more to produce more to consume more ad infinatum that real life is. I don't want that from my games.

This makes Guild Wars a better mmo, as you are much more able to set your own pace, you can more or less have the best gear almost as soon as you reach the level cap, and your success is based more on skill than gear.

kotor2 was distinctly better than kotor1. This doesn't mean that kotor1 was bad, just that kotor2 was better, even in an unfinished state. Kotor2 sadly also has the distinction of having one of the most misunderstood plots.

sandbox games, even though their nature tends to deny it, should be held to the same quality standards where story and characterization are concerned.

that's all I've got for now, but I'll add more when I can think of more.

[Neithan]

Why is everyone allowed to say their opinions about games, but I'm the only one accused of trolling? :smallyuk:
I stand to it: Morrowind is an awful crappy game.


I hate the God of War games just because you can wrap up the game in pretty graphics doesn't hide the fact that it is a boring button masher.
I think it's a totaly hilarious button masher! :smallbiggrin:

[WNxHasoroth]

1. Fanboys should be treated kindly, with respect, and understanding. They should all be shot!

[Dogmantra]

Why is everyone allowed to say their opinions about games, but I'm the only one accused of trolling? :smallyuk:
I stand to it: Morrowind is an awful crappy game.
I think you went a bit too unpopular...
Understand that I will be sending assassins over for that statement.

I liked the Neverwinter Nights 2 campaigns... especially the original one (mainly because I keep trying to play MotB and then I get bored with the character)

[DeathQuaker]

Amen to that! I spent HOURS playing The Sims several years ago, especially when the Makin' Magic expansion came out. I haven't had the time to get into the Sims 2, but it looks and sounds like everything I loved about The Sims with some pretty damn awesome enhancements. I don't know what to make of the rumors I've heard about a Sims 3 coming out. You'd think The Sims 2 would have just as long a life as its predecessor.

As someone else pointed out, Sims 3 is more than a rumor, and will be released in June (it was originally to be released in February, but I think they decided to work out more bugs and revisit their DRM policy, for the better).

That said... on one hand, Sims 2 has been out for... I think at least 7 years now, so it's had a good long life. On the other hand, I haven't done half the things with it that I could potentially do. But I felt that way about the original Sims as well... I didn't get Sims 2 until the first expansion came out and I will probably wait to get Sims 3 (which likewise looks like it has some neat innovations--fully running sim, for one thing--if you want to leave your house, you just leave your house and walk down the street; no loading screens and time differentials between house and neighborhood). Course I ain't getting Sims 3 at all if it has SecuROM on it, of which there have been conflicting reports...

As an aside, in amazingly silly game crossover nerdery, I built Moira Brown and her house in the Sims 2. She has high enthusiasm in tinkering and runs a store where she sells garden gnomes. It's a surprisingly fun sim to play.



I am a firm believer in WRPGS, having played what I think are some of the best of them. I've never really had the opportunity to play a JRPG, since I mostly game on the PC, which doesn't have many JRPG options. I've seen my friend play a Final Fantasy game though, and it looked pretty intense. I'd love to try a JRPG sometime in my life. I don't see why the dichotomy has to be an all out enmity. They each have their merits, and I play my WRPGS like they're interactive movies anyway, so it's not much of a change for me.

Should you get yourself a PS2 (not 3, but 2... the price just got cut for the older system so it's a cheap investment), I recommend the Suikoden series (which incorporates some tactical combat in with the "Traditional"), and the Shadow Hearts series.

That and the Nintendo DS has some good RPGs for it... some refurbished old games like the older final fantasies, and some completely new things like Suikoden Tierkries.

I'm primarily a PC gamer too--I don't even own a next gen console. I am loving my little DS though because it means I can get in a gaming fix while commuting to work, and it has an amazing game library.



Playing evil is amazingly satisfying. Especially in games like Black & White.

A game like B&W would be in my "rare exception" list.


And Morrowind was just awful. Many faces looked horrible, but it didn't matter, as no NPC had any trace of character depth and personalty. It was all like aimlessly running through a huge world reading signpost. You can't call it talking to charactrs.

Morrowind has its merits, but I agree with you about the character so-called "dialogue"--horrendous and boring. The game could have been so much more compelling with actual dialogue trees.


You just forgot the face of your father.
There's so much more to Fallout series than fighting. You can play the whole game without fighting.

You know, people say this, and I played a "minimal combat" character in Fallout 2, and there were several times during random encounters (unavoidable, even if minimizable with Outdoorsman) when the enemy was literally blocking my path from escaping. Which mean I or my followers HAD TO FIGHT, even if only to clear a path to the exit.

And I'm glad you enjoy Fallout's combat, but I found it slow and awful. Some turn based combat systems are good, but Fallout's wasn't IMHO, and had the added annoyance of your followers shooting you in the ass all the time.

Here's my unpopular gaming opinion: Fallout 3's fast paced real-time-with-pause combat was vastly preferable to the older Fallouts' clunky, frustrating, and horribly AI'd combat system.

THAT SAID, however, I agree with you on a major point--the older games are definitely worth playing for the story alone.

[d12]

1-Causing random mayhem is the proper way to play GTA games. I've played GTA3, VC, and SA, and in none of those games did I ever get past the first 4-5 missions because, quite frankly, I just don't care about their precious storyline. I used hacks/cheats to open up the maps and explore while embarking on my odysseys of senseless carnage.

2-Speaking of using hacks/cheats to open maps up, closing off huge parts of the map in a sandbox-type game sucks. I paid for the entire map; I expect to be able to access the entire map more or less at my pleasure.

3-Unlockables in general are stupid. I shouldn't need to have the ability to play games at the tournament level (or equivalent degrees of leetness) against cheating-ass AI in order to access content I paid for. That would require much more time investment than I care to spend on any one thing. It may be a good game, but odds are it isn't that good. To that end, game developers should be required, by law if necessary, to include an "I just don't give a damn" feature which can be used to open all those things the devs deemed too precious to let just anybody who paid good money use. I can possibly see making allowances for unlockables that just unlock over time as you play, without concern for whether you're super-leet, such as the unlockable characters in SSBM.

4-Speaking of using hacks/cheats, many modern games don't seem to have proper cheats anymore. What the hell's up with that? Sometimes I just want to blast through everything in my way while cackling like a madman. I may get stuck at boss fights and don't really feel like banging my head against that wall 30 times, and quite possibly not succeeding even then if the developers thought fun = monstrously difficult or they were just looking to pad out their gameplay-time rating with stupidly hard bosses/levels. Not everybody's got the patience or twitch reflexes to pull off stuff like that. Give me a way to one-shot the damn thing and move on. If you insist on being smug, keep track of the number of times I use the 1-shot weapon of doom to get past stuff. Call it the "Congratulations, Game. You've Defeated Me. You Have Managed To Dream Up A Scenario My Frayed Nerves Cannot Keep Up With. Your Mother Must Be Proud" stat.

5-"Fun" and "difficult" are two different ideas--they are neither equivalent nor mutually exclusive. Difficulty levels are not a sin.

6-Attractive characters are generally more pleasant to look at than non-attractive characters. I don't care how unrealistic it is, at least try to avoid making most characters horribly, atrociously hideous. For example, just about every character in Oblivion. Does everybody in Tamriel have some kind of horrible flesh-eating disease?

7-Speaking of Oblivion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with scaled encounters. I shouldn't have to worry about being unceremoniously killed in the face just because I wanted to see what was behind that ridge over there or otherwise straying from some railroad script. This is a game, not a movie. As for complaints about how unrealistic that supposedly is, maybe, but no moreso than fledgling heroes in any generic story not being immediately bitten in half by a huge dragon shortly after leaving town to see about that unusual set of lights people have been seeing the past few nights. Some call it unrealistic; I call it a reasonable design decision.

8-I found NWN2's combat system to be a friggin mess. Maybe it just happened to me, but characters regularly seemed to forget orders I gave them and just stood around. Other times characters would miraculously see enemies 400 yards away that I didn't even know were there and promptly run off to address the hordes, abandoning their allies still in the heat of battle in the process. Encounters regularly seemed to smear together without much chance to regroup in between (a phenomenon I have termed "poor encounter segregation"). No idea if either expansion improved it.

9-Much of the voicework in NWN2 and Fable 2 qualifies as crimes against humanity. I dare you to listen to that one druid-trapped-in-polar-bear-form guy in NWN2 without feeling a sudden urge to jam pens in your ears. To its credit, most of the companion NPCs I ran into before losing interest didn't have incredibly terrible voices, aside from the dwarf guy adhering to "lol dwarves is scottish!" and the gnome just being an idiot (but I repeat myself). And for Fable 2, listen to, well, just about anybody outside of maybe Theresa and Garth.

10-Gameplay is more important than story. I like Fable 2 because, despite the plot having holes big enough to drive buses through, I find it very fun to play. If it had the misfortune of possessing overly-complex/counterintuitive/broken controls it wouldn't matter if it had the best video game storyline of all time, it simply would not be enjoyable. It also helps that I have the option of sacrificing bards and other irritating characters for evil points. :P

11-Turn-based combat with no tactics/movement? Pass. Even with, if you're going with turn-based combat for a video game, you better have a very good explanation. Oddly enough, I prefer turn-based strategy games to real-time, so figure that one out.

12-Limited party sizes are stupid. I have 6 people I can bring along with me, why would I only take 2-3? That just doesn't make sense. I'm wading into extremely dangerous situations, so I'm taking as much firepower with me as possible. It was stupid and arbitrary in NWN2, and it's stupid and arbitrary in Mass Effect. It gets really funny when you run into a new possible partymate and a "select party" dialog pops up. So you select your desired party makeup, and then the other people in the area just disappear, and if you selected somebody who wasn't with you just before running into the new guy, they just appear. Yeah, that's so much more realistic.

13-Achievements--pointless. Get rid of them. Especially if they interfere with having fun/decent cheats in order to preserve some bizarre concept of the sanctity of the achievement system. If the only thing at stake is some meaningless number/icon, then I'm afraid my give a damn is broken.

14-I prefer Oblivion to Morrowind. Maybe it's because I played Oblivion first and that colored my expectations, but I just couldn't get into Morrowind. It's got nice enough landscapes and imaginative modes of travel to be sure, but it just feels like something's missing, I dunno.

15-Games should not abandon all sense of realism, fair play, or sensibility in order to arbitrarily punish you if you do something the game considers "bad." For instance, stealing stuff. Ok fine, if I do that and somebody notices, they'll probably alert any guards within earshot, but if I can get away from the scene before any guards actually see me or if I can elude capture, I should be golden. Guards on the other side of the continent who probably have much better things to worry about than a thief a thousand miles away really shouldn't be jumping down my throat, especially if no other guards even so much as got a look at me while somebody else was screaming bloody murder, especially especially if I've changed clothing in the meantime. That example is mostly based on Oblivion, again. In addition to the psychic guards, what's up with the psychic shopkeepers? They should have no way of knowing if something I have is stolen. The whole of this abandonment of any sensibility (psychic guards/shopkeepers, bunches of obscenely-leveled guys constantly trying to kill you, etc) in response to something considered "bad" is what I call "The Oblivion Effect" as a matter of fact, since it seems to be a serious problem in that game specifically, among games I've actually played.

16-Despite 15 and 6, Oblivion is probably one of my favorite games of all time. It seems to be popular to bag on the game, so I consider it 'unpopular' enough of an opinion. :P

17-Playing the evil path can be extremely fun and satisfying, provided the game doesn't employ the Oblivion Effect or otherwise arbitrarily punish you because the dev team was composed of a bunch of nancies who couldn't sleep at night with the thought of the game containing any moral ambiguity or not being entirely composed of sunshine and puppy farts.

[Lord of Rapture]

You just forgot the face of your father.
There's so much more to Fallout series than fighting. You can play the whole game without fighting. And even then, the turn-based system and SPECIAL is completely awesome. You can't ditch a game just based on the fact you're so close-minded on the matter. Given that the action is measured in seconds, it's justified to have your character shoot once a turn. Later on, it works like a breeze, and requires some actual tactics. And if turn-based combat for modern gunplay is wrong for you, well... you just set yourself for a great bash from Jagged Alliance and maybe X-Com fans.

Just PLAY Fallout, without any prejudice. It will be thousands of times better than Fallout 3. This game has too good storyline and replayability to just diss it.


If I have a plasma rifle or missile launcher, I want to feel like I'm actually shooting the weapon. That's why I play those games. I just feel like if I'm just watching overhead, I feel robbed over the experience.

And to tell you the truth, from what I've seen of the story (which is everything written about it), it's just:

1. Fetch Macguffin for your people
2. Defeat evil organization for your people

I don't feel like I'll have any attachment to the characters. It just feels like an excuse to go do stuff.

Besides, if combat is a major part of gameplay, I expect it to be done well. Why else would I play games? To talk to people? I can do that in real life. What I can't do in real life is reduce super mutants into neat little piles of ash with one well-aimed laser shot.

[Neithan]

People who feel personally offended because they don't like a game are just silly.

If you don't liek a game, don't buy and play it. There's no such thing as "punished", "exploited" or "betrayed" by the developers.

[Winthur]

And to tell you the truth, from what I've seen of the story (which is everything written about it), it's just:

1. Fetch Macguffin for your people
2. Defeat evil organization for your people

If you put it this way, yes, the storyline is simple. Then again, if you try hard enough, even epics can be reduced to those few pointers.

And if you look at it much deeper, you get a lot of well-crafted backstory about the nuclear war, FEV and an immerse look at people who you meet - the main antagonist, for example. You get to unfold a lot of mysteries that can turn out to be quite shocking, especially if after playing the game you choose to read the Fallout Bible.

[Morty]

General: Playing evil is, except in extremely rare circumstances, not fun or satisfying.


That's only because developers seem incapable of letting you play an evil character that's not a baby-eating son of a female canine choking last coins/credits/whatever out of orphans.


Assuming the demo only took you through the first village or so, it actually gets worse. A lot worse.

Yep, it ends after you leave the village. And you're right, it does seem to get a lot worse. Well, it's no news that cRPGs are dying.

[Oslecamo]

That's only because developers seem incapable of letting you play an evil character that's not a baby-eating son of a female canine choking last coins/credits/whatever out of orphans.


Perhaps because you're not really evil if your actions aren't prejudicating anyone.

If you just wear black clothes, mind your own business and only help others if there's something for you to profit but don't go around killing defenseless people for fun and profit then you're neutral.

Seriously, I don't understand how can people expect evil to be good! It's freaking EVIL! What did you think the word means?

[Archpaladin Zousha]

As someone else pointed out, Sims 3 is more than a rumor, and will be released in June (it was originally to be released in February, but I think they decided to work out more bugs and revisit their DRM policy, for the better).

That said... on one hand, Sims 2 has been out for... I think at least 7 years now, so it's had a good long life. On the other hand, I haven't done half the things with it that I could potentially do. But I felt that way about the original Sims as well... I didn't get Sims 2 until the first expansion came out and I will probably wait to get Sims 3 (which likewise looks like it has some neat innovations--fully running sim, for one thing--if you want to leave your house, you just leave your house and walk down the street; no loading screens and time differentials between house and neighborhood). Course I ain't getting Sims 3 at all if it has SecuROM on it, of which there have been conflicting reports...

As an aside, in amazingly silly game crossover nerdery, I built Moira Brown and her house in the Sims 2. She has high enthusiasm in tinkering and runs a store where she sells garden gnomes. It's a surprisingly fun sim to play.
I suppose I shouldn't really be surprised. But I doubt I'll play The Sims 2 anytime soon. My sister was really the only one who played it regularly, and she hasn't played it in years since she became president of the drama club and discovered Facebook (I freakin' LOATHE social networking sites with a passion! Cell phones and cars exist for a reason, people! Call your friends or actually visit them!)

I've been far too busy with NWN2, Fallout 3 and Mass Effect.

Should you get yourself a PS2 (not 3, but 2... the price just got cut for the older system so it's a cheap investment), I recommend the Suikoden series (which incorporates some tactical combat in with the "Traditional"), and the Shadow Hearts series.

That and the Nintendo DS has some good RPGs for it... some refurbished old games like the older final fantasies, and some completely new things like Suikoden Tierkries.

I'm primarily a PC gamer too--I don't even own a next gen console. I am loving my little DS though because it means I can get in a gaming fix while commuting to work, and it has an amazing game library.
I've considered buying a PS2, especially since I have a couple of buddies who have one that they enjoy very much. I think such an expense would be hard to justify to my parents though. They've bought my brothers pretty much every single mainstream Nintendo system through the ages (NES, Super NES, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, DS, N64, Gamecube and now the Wii,) and they hardly even use most of those anymore. My youngest brother really only plays the DS these days when he's not on the internet, and we only have two games for our Wii. Wii Sports came free with the system and is little more than a distraction, and my brothers stopped playing the Wii at all after one of them beat Twilight Princess, the only reason we got the damn Wii in the first place!

A game like B&W would be in my "rare exception" list.
I've never played B&W. I tried to once, but put it back after my mom looked at it and got a little leery of it (because you play a God in the game, and she's a relatively devout Catholic.)

Morrowind has its merits, but I agree with you about the character so-called "dialogue"--horrendous and boring. The game could have been so much more compelling with actual dialogue trees.
It's still better than the canned dialogue you get in Oblivion.

You know, people say this, and I played a "minimal combat" character in Fallout 2, and there were several times during random encounters (unavoidable, even if minimizable with Outdoorsman) when the enemy was literally blocking my path from escaping. Which mean I or my followers HAD TO FIGHT, even if only to clear a path to the exit.

And I'm glad you enjoy Fallout's combat, but I found it slow and awful. Some turn based combat systems are good, but Fallout's wasn't IMHO, and had the added annoyance of your followers shooting you in the ass all the time.

Here's my unpopular gaming opinion: Fallout 3's fast paced real-time-with-pause combat was vastly preferable to the older Fallouts' clunky, frustrating, and horribly AI'd combat system.

THAT SAID, however, I agree with you on a major point--the older games are definitely worth playing for the story alone.
I'd thought about looking for the original Fallout games once, but I decided against it. When I play games, I'm what you might call an obsessive completionist. I like to be able to see and do everything the game has to offer on a first playthrough. With the Fallout games that seems to be impossible.

[Morty]

Perhaps because you're not really evil if your actions aren't prejudicating anyone.

If you just wear black clothes, mind your own business and only help others if there's something for you to profit but don't go around killing defenseless people for fun and profit then you're neutral.

Seriously, I don't understand how can people expect evil to be good! It's freaking EVIL! What did you think the word means?

If you run around killing defenseless people you're stupid, not evil. There's plenty of ways for a character to be evil without being an insane moron. Planescape: Torment had some very good options for a reasonable evil character.

[Meltemi]

Hmmmm...well, a few of mine have been mentioned already.

1. Building in the front lines in strategy games, whether real-time or turn-based, is silly and unrealistic in general, especially for games set any time after the French Revolution. That said...

2. Realism should take fourth place after vermilsitude, internal consistency, and fun. Simply because something is realistic, it does not mean that it is good design.

3. Railroading is not evil. Linearity is not evil. Broken Bridges are not evil. A compelling story almost requires these elements to be included to a greater or lesser degree.

3a. Open sandbox is not good. Simply dropping the character into a very plain and simple world without direction or form and calling it "open sandbox" does not mean that the game, in itself, will automatically become a brilliant work. Handled well, yes, it can be good, but the same can be said for a perfectly linear railroad as above.

4. DRM is not evil. DRM is not going to break into your house, slag your computer, eat your children, and kick your puppy up onto the roof. Most gamers already tolerate a lot of DRM, from CD requirements to serial codes, though it's obviously not called that.

5. You do not need the latest tech off the assembly lines for your PC gaming rig. I'm doing just fine with a video card three or four generations out of date. I may not be able to run the latest games at the highest settings, but I can still play what I wish, as I wish.

6. Realist graphics do not require ugly graphics. Ugly people and perma-drab levels are not in and of themselves realistic. Gritty and dark do not necessarily make for good design. If you are groping around in a game level because you can't see the difference between a wall and a door texture, something's wrong with the people who designed the textures. If you design your game to use very dark levels regularly, at least include a gamma slider in your settings.

6a. Absurdist objectification is...well, absurd. Objectification of women in gaming feels mainstream to that point of absurdity, and it is not good, or even tolerable. It is not acceptable simply because "everyone else does it", or because "everyone, including men in games is objectified", or because "the function of games is to present an ideal world where everyone's attractive." For that matter, objectification of men is not good, either. This is especially true when that objectification is not even done well, presenting an unrealistic picture of beauty that distorts perception of reality worse than a Salvador Dali work.

7. Casual games are not bad. I will say this again: Casual games are not bad. If it is fun, enjoyable, and suchlike, it is a good game. It does not matter if it is short, simple, or easy, as long as it is fun. Related to this: short, simple, or easy games are not bad.

7a. Difficult is not good. Controller-snapping difficulty is not good. Tracking individual, obtuse patterns to determine the one true way of beating a given boss is not good. Trumpeter, I'm looking at you with this, because even if you're a bonus boss and by definition optional, you almost perfectly qualify. Good thing for you that the rest of the game is fun enough, and that good strategy will actually mitigate the difficulty - this is the fundamental part of difficulty that must be considered. Serious thought and planning should be able to reduce difficulty, or failing that, there must be some way to bypass or otherwise negate the roadblock.

8. The hardcore/casual divide among gamers is silly and arbitrary. I am not a casual gamer simply because I do not have the most modern rig or play the latest FPS games, nor am I a casual gamer because I wasn't around for the C64. By contrast, I am not a hardcore gamer because I play grognard-level TBS games, nor am I a hardcore gamer because I've had to play with autoexec.bat or config.sys files to get my DOS games running properly back in the old days. It is another false dichotomy that creates a sense of unwarranted elitism, which in turn simply ostracizes potential new blood - like in 7 above, hardcore gamers are not good, and casual gamers are not bad. For that matter, they don't even have consistent definitions.

[Joran]

Bioware is a great story company but recently lousy game company. After their isometric days with Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, they've had great characters, great stories and lousy gameplay.

Jade Empire had one of the most boring, easy to abuse combat systems. Despite the many "stances", I only needed one and could basically pound the same combo over to victory.

Mass Effect had clumsy controls and a bad vehicle section. The galaxy map was gorgeous but amounted to nothing but "click on planet, see if I picked up a random item for a random quest, click to next planet"

[Oslecamo]

If you run around killing defenseless people you're stupid, not evil. There's plenty of ways for a character to be evil without being an insane moron. Planescape: Torment had some very good options for a reasonable evil character.

Society disagrees with you. Killing defenseless people is one of the most basic forms of evil. When the outsider raiders came and killed everyone they got they weren't called stupid last time I checked. They were called cruel and sadic and monsters, but not stupid. It takes brains to make proper inocent killing spree and living to do it again.

Besides, there's nothing saying that you can't be evil and stupid at the same time. Nor that killing defenseless people can't be profitable. If you kill enough of them you'll actally be lauded as a mighty conqueror by future generations! You might even get to start your own country once you've wiped out all the people living there before!

But please, exemplify those deeds of so "peacefull" evil from Planescape that are so evil that people of future generations will tell tales based on your person to scare little children at night and even your original name will be considered taboo for centuries.

[Texas Jedi]

Star Wars games are never good, ever. No not even that one.




I will have to disagree with you on this point. X-Wing and Tie Fighter were both excellent games and some of the best flight simulators out there.

I can see were KOTOR's 1 & 2 were okay in some respects.

Force Unleashed looked good but didn't play as well as it looked.

[warty goblin]

Good. Just a shame it makes for games that simply aren't competitive-multiplayer worthy. And playing RTSs against humans it's that much more interesting that against computers.

Depends on your definition of interesting. I consider RTS games to be one of my favorite genres, but I never (for reasonable values of the term) play them online. I guess I played a few matches of Starcraft with a friend a couple years back, and Lord Herman and I played Company of Heroes online for a bit. Both of these were fun, but not a quantum leap above the amount of fun I could have in single player. In fact in some ways they were less fun for me, since I really don't play games to win per say, but to do cool stuff. Some of my best RTS memories involve matches I lost.



Two words: Red Alert. Where tanks can not only crush infantry effeciently(instead of infantry being some kind of ninja who can dodge incoming vehicles but not rockets/mortars/grenades), but they can even crush lesser vehicles.

I like consistency. Either tanks can crush stuff smaller than them or they can't crush anything at all.
A thing to note, a tank is a loud, relatively slow thing you can see coming from a long way off most of the time. Are you going to actually stand in its way given a choice? I suspect not. A rocket on the other hand moves really rather fast, is a lot smaller, and you don't get to see it coming a quarter of a mile off most of the time. Also I've seen guys hit with rockets plenty in CoH. Not as consistantly as with gunfire, but it certainly happens.

I tend to prefer games to at least try to progress towards a better model of reality, even if that model is internally inconsistant in places. Sure it has some downsides, but if the devs do a decent job, they are usually outweighed by the upsides. Physics, in pretty much any game, is a good example of this. Look at something like Crysis. Is every tree and building destructable? No. Is that realistic? No. Doesn't mean it's not a relevant thing that adds to gameplay where it does apply though. I like things that change the way I play a game, even if the implementation isn't perfect.


Gonna look for it. Some 2D flash strategy game.
Cool.



Altough indeed you want to keep factories away from the frontline, siege units in the medieval times were built normally right in the battlefield. Recruiting people as you marched to fight wasn't very uncommon. And takin whatever you find at the battlefield and turning it in a weapon(like recycling enemy tanks) is a basis of combat. I'll give it to CoH to allow you to pick up enemy special weapons.
Sure there are things you build on the field, ala fortifications and seige weapons. I would note however that field fortifications are often built a long time in advance of the actual fight (the Russians started preparing for the battle of Kursk what, three months before Operation Citadel?). In seige warfare time is really not an issue, or more accurately is on the attackers' side. For the vast majority of battles though time is a luxery you don't want to give your enemies, so the guy who actually brought his tanks has a distinct advantage over a guy who's still assembling the machines to build them. I agree that looting is definitely a mechanic I would like to see more of though, since that certainly does occur to a relevant degree.



Actually, no. Every army has to carry some supplies of their own. And just before the battle starts they have to leave them somewhere, generally at a improvised camp relatively near to the battlefield. Normall also togheter with the riches and strategic plans and other important stuff that would slow you down when trying to kill the enemy. Dodging the enemy army and assaulting said camp where the goodies are installed will seriously cripple said enemy army. Itwas a common strategy in the middle ages, and it is still used today. Sieges also come to mind. Isolate the enemy army of the outside world, then wait for them to shrivel up and die. Why attack the enemy armed forces when you can attack the ones who make them tick?

Right, that's just what I was talking about, supplies existing and being relevant on a battlefield scale. These are the end results of munitions manufacture, agriculture and other industrial processes though, not "go capture that iron mine so we can forge armor before the enemy a few miles away shows up," which his how most RTS economies work. Capturing the iron mine is still an important objective, but at a much higher level than that of the actual battle. In fact one may well fight the battle over the mine, but other than possibly terrain it shouldn't grant an immediate advantage to whomever holds it.


Economy management also gives an incentive for players to quickly expand to secure more resources for themselves. And since quick expansion implies overextendin your forces it also means risk. Keep too close and you end up outresourced, but spread too much and you'll fall like a castle of cards.

It also allows you to choose between trying to tech up or investing in
All of these are fundamentally only relevant decisions assuming that destroying and damaging the enemy has some sort of long term impact. Put another way, if it costs nothing to replace a unit, why bother teching up to make it more durable?


CoH and DoW(specially II) on the other hand have such resource systems that even if you're cornered in a little corner you can still push the enemy back just by building anti-units to your enemies while the enemy can't properly use his resource advantage because of stupidly low population caps.
That is entirely not my experience with CoH at least. It is true that with some skill you can create a very effective defense for a while, and if you are sufficiently skilled can push the enemy back, but replacing units costs enough and takes enough time the player with more resources still holds a substantial advantage. This is particularly true when it comes to using abilities like artillery which are very expensive and use resources only generated by map control. Tanks are similar as well, since getting 95 fuel when you control a single (even high) fuel point takes bleeding forever. Even if your enemy can't have substantially more tanks on the field at a time (which also isn't really true since pop cap is tied directly to map control, if the enemy controls more map, he also has access to more population), you will be simply outproduced. I agree the model is a bit more friendly to defensive fighting than some others, but this is not neccessarily a bad thing, since some people (like me) really like fighting defensively.



Well this is something that just has been hapening too much. Companies rush in and en up releasing ames with serious flaws. You see that's what I ike about Blizzard over other companies, they take their time to properly develop their games, and then they properly patch them up as problems arise.
I think this is really a difference in taste between us. I'd really rather play a game that at least tries to innovate, even if the execution is a bit patchy, then suffer through another game that does exactly the same thing the seven games before it did. Now obviously this is not some sort of really hard and fast rule, because a game can be innovative but so unstable, unpolished and poorly put together I'll still refuse to play it, but I'll be willing to put up with quite a bit for the sake of something I've not seen before.


And that's the "some reason" you still seem to don't understand. Blizzard cares about making quality products wich you can keep playing for years whitout them geting too old (aka SC and WC3), offers great modding tools and suport whereas other companies force you to install several third party programs that only slow down the game(again, DoW II). Do they sacrifice inovation? Probably. But hey, that's for what they give out the modding tools to their games. Inovate yourself to your heart's content!
So wait, it's OK for companies to more or less sit on their asses in terms of new ideas so long as they sell me the ability to make new stuff for their game? Don't get me wrong, I'm very much in favor of mods and mod support and it's great that Blizzard does that, but I have no interest in being a game developer as indicated by the bit where I'm not trying to become one. I do however have an interest in playing innovative games.

Nor does one have to come at the expense of the other, Doom was certainly innovative in many respects and crazy modable, as was Half-Life (and anything else made by Valve). the Elder Scrolls games also allow crazy amounts of modding, but are, at least to me reasonably innovative in terms of scale and options on offer. Mount and Blade, which is certainly radically different from any third person action game I've ever played and has really good mod support was developed by about three people. In Turkey. On a budget funded mostly by selling off beta subscriptions marketed by word of mouth. If you can innovate and be mod friendly with that sort of financial backing, Blizzard has no excuse for not being innovative given how much money they drag in. Of course that also doesn't excuse innovative companies from being mod friendly either. My point is that the issue of innovation and modability are entirely seperable. To my mind both should be encouraged, to yours, only one. Both are valid opinions.


It's a series of minor details most people don't notice but greatly increase the enjoyment for the players.
Maybe, maybe not. I played Mount and Blade since beta v.64 or so, back when it was an unpolished mess full of really amazing exploits, missing dialog, quest bugs and other things of that nature. And I loved it, far more than I've loved any super-polished 'masterpiece.' Mostly because I find the more polished a game gets, the less soul it feels like it has. Maybe this is because in some weird way polishing a game removes the soul, maybe it's because studios that tend to make really crazy soulful games also tend to lack the budget and experience to polish to the same degree, I'm not sure. What I can say is that nearly all of my really great gaming experiences have come from titles that are a bit rough 'round the edges.


Just look at Warhammer online. It's inovative, and many people said it wold replace Wow as the top MMORPG, but a series of small flaws ends up crippling the play experience in the long run, so Wow keeps being more popular.
It's also worth noting that it'd probably take more than simply being innovative to dethrone WoW at this point. I mean the game has somewhere north of 10 million active players. MMOs take so much time, depend heavily on high level content and rely so much on community, at this point I'm not even sure it's possible to do, particularly in the fantasy genre. Sure that other game might do X and Y better, but you are pushing level 65, and all the people you know are already playing WoW. Also WAR billed itself as very PVP centric, and correct me if I'm wrong, don't most MMO players mostly do PvE? It's no surprise that if you market yourself to the minority, you end up being smaller.


Altough I think that every multiplayer game should come, I must say amen to that. There's really too much focus on the multiplayer nowadays. Like the other guy said if I'm playing a computer game it's probably because I don't feel like(can't hanging out with people right now!
Assuming you meant 'every multiplayer game should come with single player' I'll disagree. I mean try to imagine a single player Team Fortress 2. I'm sure there are ways to do that, but why? The multiplayer is good (hell, even I like it), and a person's single player needs can be met elsewhere. Now bots, multiplayer games should definitely have bots. I can have a hellova lot of fun with bots, and they definitely help the multiplayer experience out as well.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Games were not better in the old days.

But they were often longer and had less voice acting.

The old games are still good in the current days.


Overly muscled, macho men are more disgusting and does more to keep women from gaming than female fanservice characters. Women are generally not attracted to such characters, can't identify with them and certainly don't have any desire to be them. The same applies to most men.

Yay! I can agree with you for once.

[Winterwind]

Nor does one have to come at the expense of the other, Doom was certainly innovative in many respects and crazy modable, as was Half-Life (and anything else made by Valve). the Elder Scrolls games also allow crazy amounts of modding, but are, at least to me reasonably innovative in terms of scale and options on offer. Mount and Blade, which is certainly radically different from any third person action game I've ever played and has really good mod support was developed by about three people. In Turkey. On a budget funded mostly by selling off beta subscriptions marketed by word of mouth. If you can innovate and be mod friendly with that sort of financial backing, Blizzard has no excuse for not being innovative given how much money they drag in. Of course that also doesn't excuse innovative companies from being mod friendly either. My point is that the issue of innovation and modability are entirely seperable. To my mind both should be encouraged, to yours, only one. Both are valid opinions.If I may join this discussion?
The one thing that Blizzard is really, really good at is ensuring their games end up really, really well balanced, with a multitude of possible ways to beat down the opponent. They may not bring overly many novel ideas into the genre (though by the point WarCraft 3 came out, heroes who gain experience and new abilities were a fairly new concept), but they make the concepts they use work together more smoothly than those who invented these concepts in the first place. By your own admission you are pretty much solely a singleplayer user. Which is perfectly fine and equally valid. However, from a singleplayer perspective only, you never get to see the part at which StarCraft and WarCraft 3 really shine. The AI is an incredibly poor opponent - it uses counters poorly, it lacks the intuition what units you might be going for or what your long-term plans or short-term tactics might be, it cannot tell a good time to fight apart from a bad one, its micro is virtually nonexistent, and all its weaknesses can be mercilessly abused. Nor does it use the really, really nasty tricks that human players can come up with.

When you look at a melee match against the AI, you see but a very, very weak impression of what an actual player-vs-player match looks like in these games. When you look at the campaign, you look at a game which may or may not fascinate you for its story (it did so for me, pure matter of taste), but I will agree that the gameplay can easily be surpassed by other games.

The multiplayer, however, is a beauty to behold in its complexity and the depth of how much one can learn, how much one can improve. Only comparing the capabilities of a, well, I guess I shall used the hated term 'casual player' for lack of a better one, with a good experienced player, and then realizing that just as big a divide exists between the latter and the national elite, who themselves are just as much dwarfed by actual progamers, one realizes just how many facets and details there are to these games. All this combined with a really excellent balance (yet another thing that doesn't matter against a computer - the AI is too weak for potential balance differences to matter anyway, and it would not know how to use its advantage properly, if one would exist).

In short, I can easily understand why you are not all that impressed with StarCraft and WarCraft, if singleplayer is all you do. You should understand, however, that the real genius of these games lies in its multiplayer, and if you find people who (inexplicably to you) admire those games like God's gift to RTSs, that would be because these people put an entirely different emphasis on multiplayer than you.

[Haruki-kun]

Final Fantasy X is ****ing awesome. Period.

[rubakhin]

Turn based combat is so boring it makes me want to chew my own face off.

Characterization is ... everything. Seriously. To me, anyway. Screw the combat and the plot and the graphics or whatever, I don't get why I should drop 2345295 dollars to hang out in your game world if you can't make me care about the people in it. Unless it's a FPS. For some reason I have a high tolerance for cardboard characters if I can use them to make awesome headshots. But games where I just have to press A or left-click twenty thousand times should give me a compelling reason to do so.

Additionally: Women should be interesting. Female characters are not interesting just because they're pretty.

And they're definitely not interesting just because they're pretty, dressed like a Prague hooker, and supernaturally devoted to my character for no readily apparent reason. Actually, it's creepy. It just makes me want to sit them down with a copy of The Feminine Mystique or something.

(Caveat: Not really a gamer. I've just been playing a few lately to bond with my kid brother. I might be missing something.)

[RPGuru1331]

While I grant that SC and WC3 are better balanced then DoW, is it really fair to call either balanced when the progamers staunchly avoid 'Toss, Undead, and Orcs (Except as a NE Counterpick)?

[The Orange Zergling]

My main one:

Defense of the Ancients is the worst map to ever disgrace Warcraft 3. In addition to completely, totally and utterly mediocre gameplay (far too many heroes to have a chance at being balanced, too much emphasis on items instead of use of hero skills or strategic thought), it has an awful community, stolen resources (imported models/textures without credit given to their authors) and it's sheer dominance of the map list suffocates any new ideas that come along.

I have more but they're relatively minor and have likely been mentioned before.

[Stormthorn]

God of War series is overated
Same for GTA

Halo series is actualy good.
As is Fable.

Popular games do not automaticly suck.
Popular games do not automaticly rock.

After trying to watch a playthrough of MGS4 (i ended up just watching the first hour and the last 2 hours with a few cutscenes in the middle) i have come to the conclusion that the game is a waste of a good movie quintilogy (or perhaps 5 or six movies. Not sure of its total cutscene length). That or make like 3 games out of it. (i havnt played much in the way of this series but i was told it was about 20x the story length of MGS2). I mean, you would make more money releasing this as six movies i would think.

[Dienekes]

I'm really really tired of all the FPS. I know I don't have to buy them (and I don't) but really the huge amount that seems to be pumping out and the high level of publicity around them annoys me.

Not that I don't like taking a gun and blasting someone's head off at times mind you. but there are other types of games out there.

[Erloas]

If I have a plasma rifle or missile launcher, I want to feel like I'm actually shooting the weapon. That's why I play those games. I just feel like if I'm just watching overhead, I feel robbed over the experience..
So basically what you are saying is that every game with a weapon should be a FPS?



And to tell you the truth, from what I've seen of the story (which is everything written about it), it's just:

1. Fetch Macguffin for your people
2. Defeat evil organization for your people

I don't feel like I'll have any attachment to the characters. It just feels like an excuse to go do stuff.

Besides, if combat is a major part of gameplay, I expect it to be done well. Why else would I play games? To talk to people? I can do that in real life. What I can't do in real life is reduce super mutants into neat little piles of ash with one well-aimed laser shot.
If you want to simply the story that much then nothing has a story. May as well say LOTR story was "get to Mount Doom and toss a ring in." The driving element of the game is to get a waterchip/GECK to save your people, there is a lot of the game that doesn't deal with that at all.
We may as well say OOTS is simply about killing Xykon and everything that happens that doesn't directly relate to that doesn't count.
Personally I was very attached to my characters from Fallout 1&2 because they were each unique and could do things differently, both in terms of combat and storyline.


I'd thought about looking for the original Fallout games once, but I decided against it. When I play games, I'm what you might call an obsessive completionist. I like to be able to see and do everything the game has to offer on a first playthrough. With the Fallout games that seems to be impossible So you are basically saying you never want to play a game that has any choices at all in it? You can see everything in Fallout 1&2 in one playthrough, but you can't do everything, because in almost every case there are 2-3 completely different choices to make and once you make that choice its made. Its not like you can choose to kill someone, then choose to help them fix their problem. That sort of reasoning would eliminate a huge number of games, pretty much everything that isn't entirely linear.



As for my own opinions.... Not every game needs to be a FPS, not every game needs to control like a FPS. Not everything in a game needs to be able to be done by every character no matter what (such as using mini-games to bypass what should be character skill rather then player skill). And along the same lines, character skill is important and should be much more important in games like RPGs. Turn based combat is a lost art and we are all worse off for its death (or near death).

I also couldn't stand Morrowind, I played it for a while but didn't get far because I just couldn't get into it. Every NPC was annoying to talk to and made me not want to talk to or help them (which of course doesn't work in an RPG).

The Rainbow Six games were the best FPSs on the market prior to being "Consolised" for Vegas. (and in this case it also pretty much meant making it like every other FPS on the market in many respects).

And not sure if this counts or not, but the whole gaming community would be much better off if they realized that gaming isn't exclusive to things with video screens. Though I'm sure that is something much more realized here then other places.

While online play is good, it shouldn't be done to the exclusion of single player content. Which mostly applies to FPSs and RTSs that assume the game doesn't exist outside of online play and one of the reasons I seldomly play either of them any more.

[Winterwind]

While I grant that SC and WC3 are better balanced then DoW, is it really fair to call either balanced when the progamers staunchly avoid 'Toss, Undead, and Orcs (Except as a NE Counterpick)?Whatever gave you that idea? :smalleek:

In the last Star League, there were twice as many Protoss as Zerg players, and the Protoss performed better than all other races, both winning more matches and ultimately getting place 1 and 2.

Which is due to variation in the current maps, strategies and, most importantly, current players involved, and changes with every season. If you take a look at the winning ratio of each race in non-mirror match-ups throughout all the Star League seasons, they all end up extremely close to 50%.

I am not sure what the current race distribution amongst WarCraft progamers is, but I believe Grubby, Zacard, FoV and a couple others would like to have a word with you. :smalltongue:

[Comet]

Somebody should rename this thread to simply "gaming opinions", since quite a lot of these don't seem to fit into the "unpopular" category.

Gah, now I can't even come up with one good suggestion myself...
Uh... WoW looks ugly? Does that count?

Fallout 3 might actually be more fun to play for me than 1 or 2. 1 and 2 just begin so slow and combat is a chore. Fallout 3 is straight to the business, has awesome robots and is easier to get into. And it looks better (okay, not sure about that one).

[RPGuru1331]

Whatever gave you that idea? :smalleek:

In the last Star League, there were twice as many Protoss as Zerg players, and the Protoss performed better than all other races, both winning more matches and ultimately getting place 1 and 2.

Which is due to variation in the current maps, strategies and, most importantly, current players involved, and changes with every season.

I am not sure what the current race distribution amongst WarCraft progamers is, but I believe Grubby, Zacard, FoV and a couple others would like to have a word with you. :smalltongue:

It's possible as I haven't kept up lately. My last run at either was months ago.

However, I did poke at something, seen
http://www.gotfrag.com/war/story/38745/?spage=2
Nyo. I don't mind being wrong,b ut if I'm not mistaken, there's a serious preponderance of Humans and Night Elves throughout the tournament. One tournament isn't proof, and I will not at all deny that individual players may find their best in others, but can you show me in some way?

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff of Moddingham: Please take all of these discussions to the appropriate subject matter threads. If there isn't one, feel free to start one, but please look through the first few pages of threads before starting a new one.

Consolidating all the "unpopular" topics into one thread is not really appropriate for the overall tone of this forum.

Thread locked.