Overrated Games

[YvizztX23]

It always happens. In any form of entertainment media, you can find something that you hate but everyone else loves. Gaming is especially likely to have things like this, as it seems that there is always a hot game that is annoyingly over praised. So, here is my scoring system, and a few of my overrated games.

1: Games rated a one on the overrated scale are quite good, but still not as legendary as you would be lead to believe.

2: These games are enjoyable, but slightly over loved.

3: These are good, but not great, as many would lead you to believe.

4: Ugh. These are good for a laugh, nothing more.

5: Despite what people say, no redeeming qualities, whatsoever.

And here is my list:

Super Mario Galaxy - 1. I love this game, but it is simply not the insane champion of the Wii that some want you to think it is.

Halo - 1. No list of overrated games is complete without Halo. I myself love it, but find that some aspects are overrated.

Super Smash Bros. - 2. I think these get so much attention because of the fact that nerds love anything with many favorite characters in it.

Guitar Hero - 3. Aside from the disturbing art style, this is an okay game. It gets to much attention, though...

Ocarina of Time - 4. Why oh why will people not shut up about this game? It is eleven years old, and showing it!


So, using the scoring system, what are your overrateds? Please note that this post was not made to start a flame war, but simply to gather opinions.

[Inhuman Bot]

I'd say...

4-5: The entire Final Fantasy series. Sorry, WA.
Boring, grindy, puddle-deep charcters, few improvements in gameplay, and not particularly great charcters.

Kefka is amazing, though.

1: Okami. This is firstly because I dislike the Zelda series, and secondally because the paintbrush moves are a bitch to pull off.

[Talking Donkey]

Let's see, in no particular order...

Half-Life 2

World of Warcraft

FarCry

Not bad games, just not as good as fanboy's and professionals say they are.

[YvizztX23]

I'd say...

4-5: The entire Final Fantasy series. Sorry, WA.
Boring, grindy, puddle-deep charcters, few improvements in gameplay, and not particularly great charcters.

Kefka is amazing, though.

1: Okami. This is firstly because I dislike the Zelda series, and secondally because the paintbrush moves are a bitch to pull off.

On Final Fantasy: Yeah, I agree. I did like Tactics, though...

On Okami: How dare you! :smallannoyed:

[YvizztX23]

Let's see, in no particular order...

Half-Life 2

World of Warcraft

FarCry

Not bad games, just not as good as fanboy's and professionals say they are.

The worst offenders of overrating games are always fanboys and professionals. Such is a fact.

[EleventhHour]

Ocarina of Time - 4. Why oh why will people not shut up about this game? It is eleven years old, and showing it!


Because it feels like all the newer Zeldas are OoT rehashed, and the music for all of the newer games is remixed OoT.

>.>

/random

[YvizztX23]

Because it feels like all the newer Zeldas are OoT rehashed, and the music for all of the newer games is remixed OoT.

>.>

/random

True. It should be known that Oot is the only Zelda game I actually go out of my way to dislike.

[AgentPaper]

Bioshock - 3. Not sure what's supposed to be so great about it. Okay, the plot's decent, but not amazing. I mean, what's there is good, but there just isn't enough to make an entire game out of.


I'm gunna have to call shenanigans on Ocarina of Time, though. Yes, if you compare it to current games, it's not very good, but that's hardly fair. For a game of it's time, it's pretty damned amazing, and even now it can be a fun play through, which says a lot given it's age. Saying it's a bad game because it's old is like saying current games are terrible because graphics and hardware will be so much better 10 years from now. :smallannoyed:

[YvizztX23]

Bioshock - 3. Not sure what's supposed to be so great about it. Okay, the plot's decent, but not amazing. I mean, what's there is good, but there just isn't enough to make an entire game out of.


I'm gunna have to call shenanigans on Ocarina of Time, though. Yes, if you compare it to current games, it's not very good, but that's hardly fair. For a game of it's time, it's pretty damned amazing, and even now it can be a fun play through, which says a lot given it's age. Saying it's a bad game because it's old is like saying current games are terrible because graphics and hardware will be so much better 10 years from now. :smallannoyed:

Oh, great, now I have someone prepared to murder me over Ocarina of Time. The fact is is that it is not as much fun for someone who never played it back in the day. A game that can do that is what I call timeless. Ocarina is not this game. I also cannot get over the shallow plot and characters.

And you are right about BioShock. I just think that the architecture is nice...

[AgentPaper]

Oh, great, now I have someone prepared to murder me over Ocarina of Time. The fact is is that it is not as much fun for someone who never played it back in the day. A game that can do that is what I call timeless. Ocarina is not this game. I also cannot get over the shallow plot and characters.

Hey, hey, I never said it was a timeless game. Timeless doesn't mean a game is good, and neither does a game being good make it timeless. Tetris for example is timeless in it's simplicity, but isn't really that amazing a game in the first place, at least to me.

Also, don't make me into a straw-man and put words into my mouth. I never said that you're evil for not liking the game, just that calling it "over-hyped" because it's not as good as current games isn't really fair.

[Inhuman Bot]

On Okami: How dare you! :smallannoyed:

How dare you mock SMG? Or Halo?

Not that I like the second at all, or am a huge fan of the first, but..

And doesn't that make


Oh, great, now I have someone prepared to murder me over Ocarina of Time. The fact is is that it is not as much fun for someone who never played it back in the day. A game that can do that is what I call timeless. Ocarina is not this game. I also cannot get over the shallow plot and characters.

A little hypocritical?

[Don Julio Anejo]

Red Alert 3. It's a complete and utter piece of crap. No, the gameplay is okay, but everything else about it, from attack bears to Japanese transformers and gundams is just retarded.

[JMobius]

And doesn't that make...A little hypocritical?

Really, there was no way this thread wasn't going to be in the first place. The very premise is incendiary.

[FoE]

So, is this just a thread to tell everyone why they shouldn't like this certain game as much as they like it 'cause you said so?

This is going to go very well.

[Smight]

5 - Fallout 3 , Oblivion.
3 - Bioshock : it's awesome in first 10% of the game, then gets boring quickly.
1- HALO : it's a good game but I don't get it what so special about it.

[Fiery Diamond]

Yeah, this thread should probably just die, or it's going to end up as an flaming ball of gaming hellfire. You can't really expect ardent fans of games to take insults to their favorites sitting down, you know. They may come to this thread to comment on a game they dislike that others like, find their own favorite game slandered, and get mad.

Like, say, insulting Ocarina of Time, which is, IMO, as much better than ANY FPS, no matter what the graphics or story, as current computers compared to the first computers. There simply is no comparison, because games like Halo fall under category 5 in the OP, whereas if you don't like OoT, you should never classify it as lower than 1.


...
See what I mean?

[Temotei]

Originally posted by Fiery Diamond
Yeah, this thread should probably just die, or it's going to end up as an flaming ball of gaming hellfire.

*casts Flaming Sphere*

[AgentPaper]

Yeah, this thread should probably just die, or it's going to end up as an flaming ball of gaming hellfire. You can't really expect ardent fans of games to take insults to their favorites sitting down, you know. They may come to this thread to comment on a game they dislike that others like, find their own favorite game slandered, and get mad.

Like, say, insulting Ocarina of Time, which is, IMO, as much better than ANY FPS, no matter what the graphics or story, as current computers compared to the first computers. There simply is no comparison, because games like Halo fall under category 5 in the OP, whereas if you don't like OoT, you should never classify it as lower than 1.


...
See what I mean?

You say it's inevitable that this will turn into a flame war, but you're the only one making it more likely. Seriously, don't go into a thread and start doomsaying that it's going to be closed/die/turn into a flamewar. If that happens, too bad, let the mods take care of it, but you saying it's going to happen is just spam at best, and at worst could very well cause an actual flame war to start. So don't do it.


Anyways, there's nothing wrong with disliking Oracle of Time, I just thought he wasn't being fair, saying it was overrated because it's old. I'd also put Halo as a 1, because it's a perfectly solid game, and pretty good as shooters go, just not worth the crazy hype it's gotten. But that's not unique to FPSs at any rate, and LoZ: Twilight Princess would also rate a 1 in my book, though it wasn't quite as hyped up as Halo & sequels.

[Bavarian itP]

You can't really expect ardent fans of games to take insults to their favorites sitting down, you know.

Why not? They 're just games.




Red Alert 3. It's a complete and utter piece of crap. No, the gameplay is okay, but everything else about it, from attack bears to Japanese transformers and gundams is just retarded.

Ok, but do you really expects a game in these days that covers the invasion of the US by the Soviets to take itself seriously?

[Yora]

I'd put Metal Gear Solid 2 on a 2. or maybe a 3.
It's not a bad game and quite fun to play, but I enjoyed the first one much more and have more fun with the third.
But the evil mutant team of the second is boring and too strange, while the ending... well, I think the ending sucks. (Only slightly better than "it was all a dream".)

Any Mario or Sonic game. Why would anyone want to play that?!

[Lord of Rapture]

Oblivion-5, pure ****, no fun whatsoever. Bethesda really had to fix their act for Fallout 3 - and they did.

Halo - 5, Boring, boring, boring.

Any FF game - 5

Valkyria Chronicles - 3, gameplay is solid, but story is pure rubbish.

OoT-3, good for its time, but it's getting old

[Tavar]

Red Alert 3. It's a complete and utter piece of crap. No, the gameplay is okay, but everything else about it, from attack bears to Japanese transformers and gundams is just retarded.

So, the difference between this and the older games is....

[SparkMandriller]

You can't really expect ardent fans of games to take insults to their favorites sitting down, you know.

I don't think it's that unreasonable to expect them to act like they're over ten years old.

Seriously, getting angry because someone doesn't like a game as much as you do? Angry. Over that. I mean come on. :/

[Yora]

I think we also need a thread "games you enjoy that everyone hates". :smallbiggrin:

[Lord of Rapture]

I think we also need a thread "games you enjoy that everyone hates". :smallbiggrin:

We already did that. It looped right back around to this thread. :smallsigh:

[Ikialev]

Final Fantasy 7.
Anything Mario.
Halo 3.
Half-Life 2.
Nintendogs.
Wii Sports.

[toasty]

So, the difference between this and the older games is....

The older games were made by Westwood. :smallcool:

I never played RA3, but I remember RA2, RA, C&C and Tiberium Wars all being amazing games. Sure RA2 had dolphins and squids, but other than that... they were really cool. Generals and C&C3 were much less so. Generals really isn't even Command and Conquer. Sure, it has some fun stuff and cool teams... but its not C&C.

[Avilan the Grey]

I had to dig deep to remember the games I felt were overrated, that reviewers and others love(d):

Silver
The Dig
Beneath a Steel Sky
The Warcraft series (not WoW, never played WoW)

[Oslecamo]

1-Dawn of War
2-Company of heros blind ninjas/Halo.
3-The last FF series. The old ones were and are actualy good, as I'm willing to play them as DS ports.
4-Dawn of War II.
5-Most MMOs out there, wich are nothing more than precious stealers of your lifetime.

Also why the hate against OoT? The only thing it has outdated really it's the graphics. I would kill for a game nowadays with the same play mechanics but updated graphics!

[AgentPaper]

Also why the hate against OoT? The only thing it has outdated really it's the graphics. I would kill for a game nowadays with the same play mechanics but updated graphics!

*cough* Twilight Princess *cough*

And the graphics really aren't the only part of the game that's outdated. The story is rather straight-forward as well, and the gameplay wasn't especially deep or interesting. You used your sword, bow, and whatever item you last picked up from a dungeon. Again, it was good for it's time, but it doesn't really stack up to current games.

I'd actually say the same thing about some of the old FF games, though those tended to have pretty solid storylines even by today's standards.

[Emperor Ing]

#1 most overrated game of all time:

Bioshock. Hands down.

1) ZERO multiplayer
2) Extremely limited variety of enemies
3) Grossly repetitive enviroments

of course, reason 1 is a major turnoff for me on many games.

[Oslecamo]

*cough* Twilight Princess *cough*

Hmm, fair enough, but I kinda missed the power to completely change reality, like time manipulation on OoT and oracle of time and weather manipulation in WW and oracle of seasons.



And the graphics really aren't the only part of the game that's outdated. The story is rather straight-forward as well, and the gameplay wasn't especially deep or interesting. You used your sword, bow, and whatever item you last picked up from a dungeon. Again, it was good for it's time, but it doesn't really stack up to current games.

Please point me to an adventure game nowadays that doesn't follow this formula. At least OoT kinda rewarded me for thinking, while modern games seem to just stick a big pointer sign telling you to USE ITEM/SKILL X HERE YOU RETARDED!

Plus ALL of the extra items had uses in combat. Hookshot stunned medium oponents, killed lesser ones and allowed you to quickly aproach stronger ones. Bombs damaged everything. Ice arrows allowed you to walk on water and freeze enemies, while fire arrows put enemies in fire and lighted up torches. Song of the sun opened puzles and stuned undeads. Ect ect.

And hey, don't tell me you saw Gandonorf coming from behind your back and actualy conquering the world for once!

[GolemsVoice]

I actually liked Bioshock very much, it was one of the best shooters I've played in my lifetime. Not THE best, but very fun, and with a fine plot. But of course I can see someone not liking it. I don't care about multiplayer, at least not in Bioshock, but, amusingly, some fans seem to think that the very EXISTENCE of multiplayer in Bioshock 2 will RUIN THE GAME, no matter what the single player part will look like. And of course the architecture is repetitive, it's a very closed of environment. Then again, the architecture is just my style, so, yeah, if you happen to get bored of this kind of Arthouse deco, it can get annyoing fast.

Soo, games that I think are overrated? Owning no console, I never got into the whole Halo hype, but then again, I haven't tried it, so what can I say. I suspect however, that it is not the game that some people think it is.

[toasty]

Silver

:smallconfused: What's not to like about that game? Sure the Story Line is really cliche, but I remember having lots of fun with that game. As far as Hack n' Slashes go its quite good. Diablo II might be better because of the amount of options you have, but its still rather fun.


1-Dawn of War
2-Company of heros blind ninjas/Halo.
4-Dawn of War II.

What, exactly, is overrated about these games? I mean... I liked them well enough.

[X2]

Any game released after 1999. I just don't care about them...

I guess that's because I'm a big Atari/NES nut and think all the challenge has gone from games.

Mega Man 1 was just incredibly hard!

[Athaniar]

Ocarina of Time is good, but (almost) everything it did Majora's Mask did better.

[X2]

Ocarina of Time is good, but (almost) everything it did Majora's Mask did better.

You'd be the only one who thinks that. Most people seem to think that if Ocarina of Time is a good Disney movie Majora's Mask is the mediocre direct-to-video sequel.

[Oslecamo]

What, exactly, is overrated about these games? I mean... I liked them well enough.

They have descending balance, DoW strategy comes down to spamming anti-infantry units and anti-tank units, CoH doesn't even allow you to properly spam units and has one of the worst AIs I've ever seen (like troops geting in the wrong side of the cover half of the time when you're explicitly ordering them to put them behind cover), and DoW II has even less troop capacity, balance, variety, horribly few maps for MP and SP, no condition manipulation like extra/fewer resources and they removed almost all base building, meaning the game descends into running around the map like headless chickens, because your troops can repair futuristic tanks, but they cannot build a freaking sandbag line.

Lord Xavius:I do loved Majora's mask, probably even more than OoT, but... MM demanded a stupid add-on for the N64, meaning a lot of people wich played OoT probably never played it. Also no Zelda anywhere to be seen. And pretty hardcore. The whole water dungeon was a true nightmare. On the good sense for me, but I can understand other people hating it.

So MM would probably be an underrated game. The several side quests, the AWESOME dungeons, the tribal masks, the whole go back into time and create an alternate reality, it was indeed one of the best games I ever played.

[Athaniar]

You'd be the only one who thinks that. Most people seem to think that if Ocarina of Time is a good Disney movie Majora's Mask is the mediocre direct-to-video sequel.
That's an exaggeration. MetaCritic, for example, has it rated just 4 points below Ocarina of Time (at 95, which is still enough to place it above the large majority of other games ever released).



Lord Xavius:I do loved Majora's mask, probably even more than OoT, but... MM demanded a stupid add-on for the N64, meaning a lot of people wich played OoT probably never played it.
A pity, really. Good thing it's available for both the GameCube (for which I got it) and Wii (Virtual Console).


Also no Zelda anywhere to be seen.
Well, she is in a flashback.


So MM would probably be an underrated game. The several side quests, the AWESOME dungeons, the tribal masks, the whole go back into time and create an alternate reality, it was indeed one of the best games I ever played.
Agreed.

[Gamerlord]

World of warcraft-5. GOD I hate this game, it has boring gameplay, filled with morons, etc.

Halo- 5. Because a game has me do nothing but shoot people and the only people who play it are immature 12 year olds I should bow down and worship it?


Elder scrolls 4. 5. sure it has shiny graphics, it also has a cliche story, a awful leveling system, and one of the worst combat systems ever.

[Timberwolf]

Mario - any - 5

I'm probably going to get a whole load of outrage for this, since I have dared to critiscise Mario, but since this is a thread about opinions, I will say why I feel like this. (Last time I ended up in a massive fight on the deviantArt forums for suggesting that Mario may not be all that. Still, one of the things I like about this place is that I am allowed to have an opinion that varies from the rest of the planet's and if someone disagrees with me then they will do it politely.)

Unlike a lot of people here, I'm old enough to remember Mario on the NES when that was sparkly new. I thought it was slow, jerky and boring then, especially when compared with the speed, fluidity and, in my opinion, imaginative design and vibrant art of the early Sonic games. Mario just appeared to be platforms everywhere. Sonic you had loop the loops, serious jumps, a whole zone based around being in a giant pinball machine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CV0aM6ZcXM&feature=related), and I love pinball, hence why Sonic Spinball was my favourite of the series plus the original special stages (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQPzO57uFmY). (BTW, I'm no great fan of Sonic either, but I do think that the Master System - Mega Drive / NES + SNES era, his were the better games by far) Later experience has done nothing to disuade me of this opinion of Mario as being slow.

Then there's the spin offs. Mario Kart is fun for 30 minutes or so. Mario tennis i'm yet to try on the grounds of never liking tennis games. Sonic and Mario at the Olympics just sounds like an unholy mess of 4 of my least favourite things. Sonic, Mario, sports games and the Olympics.

Oh, and did I say that after 20 years of aquaintance, I hate Mario's (and Sonic's for that matter) face and wish they'd both do something new ? I'll give Bowser and Dr Robotnik their due, neither of them are quitters, but surely Robotnik has invented the "Planetcracker" class laser cannon or Hedgehog seaking missile by now and surely Bowser has learnt by now to get on with the job of conquering the mushroom kingdom instead of sitting around waiting for Peach to be rescued (again).

[Yora]

Halo- 5. Because a game has me do nothing but shoot people and the only people who play it are immature 12 year olds I should bow down and worship it?
I played it. And I even dared to enjoy it! *gasp*

It's a nice shoter, and much more interesting than many others I played.

[SilverSheriff]

Mario - any - 5

-snip-

tldr - SO OLD! I WILL CRUSH THEM! GRAAAGHHHH!!!

[Timberwolf]

tldr - SO OLD! I WILL CRUSH THEM! GRAAAGHHHH!!!

If you mean crush Mario and Sonic, please, be my guest.

[Gamerlord]

I played it. And I even dared to enjoy it! *gasp*

It's a nice shooter(watch your spelling!), and much more interesting than many others I played.

This is a list of opinions, but too be honest, I hate FPSs as a whole, I prefer games where you actually need to think.

[Yora]

That's what I thought. :smallbiggrin:

[Aotrs Commander]

I have to say, I don't think there's that many games that I've played that have been overhyped. Let's see...

Morrowind - 1. Not a bad game, but it pales into comparison to a Bioware RPG. (Or one of the (in-my-not-at-all-humble opinion) better Final Fantasy games, like, say FFX.) I'm not a sand box sort of person, though, I prefer a strong plot than to be able to do anything. Ditto for Fallout 3. (Oblivion was about a 3-4 though I'm not sure it can claim as fervenently claim to be well-loved...!)

Dawn of War - About a 2 in my opinion. It was entertaining (up until Dark Crusade), but I didn't think it was as fun as C&C (and yes, I did actually like RA3...and I'm a bit tweaked my favoruite base-building RTS franchise is losing it's base building in C&C4). Soul Storm, on the other hand, is pretty awful.

Starcraft - 3. Yes, Starcraft. I am not a frenetic sort of game player (hense why I don't play FPS like, at all; C&C Renegade and Voyager Elite Force are the only two I even tried to play). The story and plot was great; but, crickey, if it wasn't, I'd have given up. It always felt too much like hard work. (If I play through it again, or pick up Starcraft 2, it's goin' on easy mode!)

NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer - 2. This seems to get a lot more praise than the other main story campaigns, yet it remains the one I've done the least on. Basically because I found the general fun of the game was overshadowed by having to charge through the game in order to not die of spirit hunger.

Monkey Island 2 - 2: Often touted as the best of the series, I just don't see it. And I thought the ending was really lame. I thought Curse was much better. (And yes, I liked Escape from Monkey Island.)

Fable 1- 4. Short, mildly amusing but ultimately not enthralling. Fable had a lot of potential, but wasted it. To quote Yathzee's review of Fable 2 (and something I said to myself at the time), which I think is the best thing to say of it; "you can, but why would you want to?"

Perimeter - 5. Despite high rating reveiws and an apparently nivana-like premise for an addimittedly commited turtlers like myself, it has to be the worse RTS I've ever played. (Star Trek: New Worlds doesn't count, because that was so bad I couldn't play it.) I tried it again a few months ago, and even on easy mode, I gave up in utter disgust after trying the same, dull, uninteresting and extremely annoying mission about ten to twenty times.

Huh. Guess there were more than I thought. And hopefully some from a different (i.e. unique perspective).

(You can by the by, place all FPS, platformers, beat 'em ups and sports in category 5 automatically as far as I go.)

[Green-Shirt Q]

1: Games rated a one on the overrated scale are quite good, but still not as legendary as you would be lead to believe.

2: These games are enjoyable, but slightly over loved.

3: These are good, but not great, as many would lead you to believe.

4: Ugh. These are good for a laugh, nothing more.

5: Despite what people say, no redeeming qualities, whatsoever.

By these definitions, I would have to say...

EVERY SINGLE GAME EVER MADE! :tongue:

[Erloas]

Well I'm going to start with every Mario game ever made (or at least all of the ones I've played). They vary in quality of course but everyone acts like they are a lot better then they are.

GTA3+ They are really overrated in so many ways.

Morrowind, ok I picked it up a bit late in its lifecycle but I simply couldn't get into the game at all. About the same could be said of Fallout 3, it was ok but not amazing. I can assume by association that Oblivion is the same way but I haven't played it myself.

Starcraft, World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3, and Diablo. The first two much more then the last two. WoW probably being among the worst for being overrated out of everything. People mostly love WoW for the people they play with which is almost completely unrelated to the game. They are all good games, they just aren't nearly as good as people act like.

Can't comment on Halo or any of the other big Xbox games because I haven't played any of them.


I would disagree with DoW being overrated, not so much because it is an amazing game but because I don't see the rating for that game being all that high. It has its fans for sure, but you see a lot less of the blind love and almost complete admiration for it that you get with a lot of the other games.

[Winthur]

Team Fortress 2.

No, really. I LIKE this game. It's definitely fun. It isn't something really new, but it's fun.
My gripe is how often do I have to see all those jokes about it. At first I had no idea what are they talking about, then as I found out, I started seeing more and more webcomic creators, meme-generators on 4chan, whatever, who would mindlessly keep quoting the game. The results, a lot of the time, just aren't funny. You can't make something funny just because a Scout went by and said "Yo what's up". I was screaming in delight when finally someone gave that annoying jerk with a baseball bat a proper treatment for making my interest in media hell. (http://gamer9.net/comics/091006.jpg)

Not to mention a ton of fans who would say that no one ever created a game like TF2 and it's the second coming of Christ.

All those things make me shudder and turn on QuakeLive, which allows me to play a classic and act snobbish about it at the same time. :smallbiggrin:

[shadow_archmagi]

Killing floor

[Timberwolf]

Well I'm going to start with every Mario game ever made (or at least all of the ones I've played). They vary in quality of course but everyone acts like they are a lot better then they are.

GTA3+ They are really overrated in so many ways.

Starcraft, World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3, and Diablo. The first two much more then the last two. WoW probably being among the worst for being overrated out of everything. People mostly love WoW for the people they play with which is almost completely unrelated to the game. They are all good games, they just aren't nearly as good as people act like.

Can't comment on Halo or any of the other big Xbox games because I haven't played any of them.

I would disagree with DoW being overrated, not so much because it is an amazing game but because I don't see the rating for that game being all that high. It has its fans for sure, but you see a lot less of the blind love and almost complete admiration for it that you get with a lot of the other games.

Good sir, please accept this internet cookie for superlative taste in games as a token of my appreciation.

[Jahkaivah]

By these definitions, I would have to say...

EVERY SINGLE GAME EVER MADE! :tongue:

It needs to be said:

Any game highly rated is overrated.

Name a game I like, any game I like, and I will happily admit it's overrated.

Common sense really, when disussing something they like, people will happily exaggerate the pros and ignore the cons, thus making said game overrated, no likable game is immune to this.

The real question is how overrated.

[Oslecamo]

Starcraft, World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3, and Diablo. The first two much more then the last two. WoW probably being among the worst for being overrated out of everything. People mostly love WoW for the people they play with which is almost completely unrelated to the game. They are all good games, they just aren't nearly as good as people act like.


Excuse me, but Starcraft is basicaly the oficial sport of a whole country.

Sure it has outdated graphics, and the SP isn't that good, but I challenge you to find a single RTS with more than one playable race wich is more well balanced for multiplayer than Starcraft!

That's why people love starcraft. It's an RTS with a great deal of complexity while at the same time retaining great balance, wich no other RTS to today has managed to replicate. Combined with the map editor it's a game you can play for years and still keep you hooked. There aren't really much games out there that can claim that.

[Makensha]

World of Warcraft-1: I put about 500 hours into this game before quitting. If I can put 500 hours into a game, I can't really give it any lower a rating than 1, can I? For all its downfalls, it did bring me one of the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had in gaming. Protection Paladin AoE Grinding. Did it for 35 levels, and I genuinely miss it.

Halo-2: Good, and it did bring a mini revolution to the FPS, especially the console FPS.

Guitar Hero-3: Do I really have to say anything? Ugh

Runescape-5: The only positive thing I can say is that it introduced me to MMOs.

TES Morrowind-2: Good, but only with a thousand mods.

Neverwinter Nights-1: Dang good, but overhyped and stupidly unbalanced classes.

Also, I'm going to defend OoT for a second. I never really got that into any of the other Zelda games, but I really do enjoy the game to this day (not to say I haven't beat it or anything... *cough*). I didn't even play it until years after the fact (I got it/an N64 one week before the Gamecube released). While yes it has been outdated, I'm going to say what I feel keeps it as one of my favorite games is design, not technical prowess.

[Avilan the Grey]

#1 most overrated game of all time:

Bioshock. Hands down.

1) ZERO multiplayer
2) Extremely limited variety of enemies
3) Grossly repetitive enviroments

of course, reason 1 is a major turnoff for me on many games.

And others, like me, considers it a benefit, because it usually means the real game (aka the single player campaign) had had more work done to it. Of course when it comes to Bioshock? No such luck.

[Drascin]

Oh, great, now I have someone prepared to murder me over Ocarina of Time. The fact is is that it is not as much fun for someone who never played it back in the day. A game that can do that is what I call timeless. Ocarina is not this game. I also cannot get over the shallow plot and characters.


Dunno about that. I handed it to a couple friends (brothers both of them) who never played it on its day (because they were in the PSX camp) and they both love OoT. This handing occured six months ago, when they got a Wii and I could give them my collection disc. Consensus was, it was much better than the actual Wii Zelda, Twilight Princess, and in their opinion better than any Zelda they've played since Zelda DX ("any Zelda they played", though, includes only every portable Zelda game. As said, their first tabletop Nintendo console is the Wii). So, you know, it would seem people who never played it can indeed find it fun.

But eh, whatever. Really, every game is overrated by someone, because that's how humans work, after all. Not to be insulting, but in all honesty, I don't quite get the point of a thread the sole aim of which is for us to tell each other "the games you like aren't as good as you think", I'm afraid. I mean, at least the reverse threads (the "Favorite X" threads) can be useful in getting people to know and try new games, which with some luck they might like.

[toasty]

Excuse me, but Starcraft is basicaly the oficial sport of a whole country.

Sure it has outdated graphics, and the SP isn't that good, but I challenge you to find a single RTS with more than one playable race wich is more well balanced for multiplayer than Starcraft!

That's why people love starcraft. It's an RTS with a great deal of complexity while at the same time retaining great balance, wich no other RTS to today has managed to replicate. Combined with the map editor it's a game you can play for years and still keep you hooked. There aren't really much games out there that can claim that.

Doesn't mean that its overrated. In fact, if anything, being an official sport only makes it more overrated. Not that I disagree with you (I'm not a Starcraft fan, but I respect any game that came turn itself into a pro sport) but the point remains.

[Phase]

This is a list of opinions, but too be honest, I hate FPSs as a whole, I prefer games where you actually need to think.

That's actually quite rude. Good FPSs require just as much thought as good RTSs, or good Turn-Based strategies. The only difference is an increased requirement for environmental awareness, and much quicker thinking. If you charge into a room for of mooks just firing your gun randomly, no taking cover or trying to outmaneuver them, you WILL die.

In short, FPSs are fast-paced thinking games. You have to prioritize, strategize, and execute in the space of, like, thirty seconds. In fact, a good tactical FPS probably requires more thinking than any other genre.

[Winthur]

Good FPSs require just as much thought as good RTSs, or good Turn-Based strategies.

Objection! Serious Sam and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter are without doubt good FPS games, and yet they require as much of a thought as adding two to two. Just shoot at everything in sight.

[Jahkaivah]

Objection! Serious Sam and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter are without doubt good FPS games, and yet they require as much of a thought as adding two to two. Just shoot at everything in sight.

While analysis and prioritising the biggest threats first, applying the appropriate weapon to the appropriate enemy, and running the hell all over the place.

[Yora]

I'd say it requires a differnt kind of thinking. You don't formulate plans and carefully consider every move. Instead you have to react fast and make descisions at speeds that don't allow for active planning.

[Jahkaivah]

I'd say it requires a differnt kind of thinking. You don't formulate plans and carefully consider every move. Instead you have to react fast and make descisions at speeds that don't allow for active planning.

So it's like a typical RTS? :smalltongue:

[Yora]

Depends on what skill level you are playing. :smallbiggrin:

Tournament play probably is even harder than that.

[Phase]

So it's like a typical RTS? :smalltongue:

Zing!

But still, either it's single-player and you have all the time in the world to strategize beforehand, or multiplayer, and you are forced to outsmart other human beings before they can get the intel or re-take the bridge or sink your aircraft carrier or some crap.

[Drakyn]

But eh, whatever. Really, every game is overrated by someone, because that's how humans work, after all. Not to be insulting, but in all honesty, I don't quite get the point of a thread the sole aim of which is for us to tell each other "the games you like aren't as good as you think", I'm afraid. I mean, at least the reverse threads (the "Favorite X" threads) can be useful in getting people to know and try new games, which with some luck they might like.

Doesn't it seem like there's nothing really that anyone can get out of here except for some satisfaction from venting? The only positive reinforcement you'll get is from someone saying "YES! I ALSO thought that game was overrated!" and given the diversity of opinions on display + the fact that the games you're disliking are explicitly widely well-thought-of, it seems that the odds of this are lower than just talking about games you like.

[Yora]

This is an internet forum. Don't we just all talk only because we like our words? :smallbiggrin:

[Erloas]

Excuse me, but Starcraft is basicaly the oficial sport of a whole country.

Sure it has outdated graphics, and the SP isn't that good, but I challenge you to find a single RTS with more than one playable race wich is more well balanced for multiplayer than Starcraft!

That's why people love starcraft. It's an RTS with a great deal of complexity while at the same time retaining great balance, wich no other RTS to today has managed to replicate. Combined with the map editor it's a game you can play for years and still keep you hooked. There aren't really much games out there that can claim that.

Case in point of why it is overrated. You can't say anything bad about the game every without people going off on its holiness and how it is the greatest thing ever.

Baseball is also (or kind of was) the official sport of some countries too and it is also highly overrated.

And one other thing is that Multiplayer, especially competative multiplayer isn't the end all and be all of game quality. For it to be this pinaccle of perfection that people go on and on about then all aspects of the game must be perfect and it really should be for all players. The single player wasn't all that great and multiplayer just sucks if you don't have hundreds of hours of your life to devote to the game to learn every aspect of the game to stand a chance of surviving more then 10 minutes.
It would kind of being like saying Football is the best game ever because it takes the highest calibure of althletes for its key positions, while ignoring the other aspects of the game.

Its not even a question of "is it better then every other RTS" it is a question of if any game in any genre can be as pefect as people act like Starcraft is.

[Drakyn]

This is an internet forum. Don't we just all talk only because we like our words? :smallbiggrin:

I thought we also posted so that we could get big bunches of smugness from people agreeing with us, thus creating a beautiful and harmonious circlejerk of discussion :(

[Oslecamo]

Case in point of why it is overrated. You can't say anything bad about the game every without people going off on its holiness and how it is the greatest thing ever.
O'rrly? Then you'll have to point me to those people, since I've never met them.

Nobody says it's the greatest thing evar. Just that it's the best RTS evar. For multiplayer mode. And even then it still has flaws.



Baseball is also (or kind of was) the official sport of some countries too and it is also highly overrated.

A lot of physical sports are national sports. Starcraft is the only computer game I remember having achieved that status.



And one other thing is that Multiplayer, especially competative multiplayer isn't the end all and be all of game quality. For it to be this pinaccle of perfection that people go on and on about then all aspects of the game must be perfect and it really should be for all players. The single player wasn't all that great

Wich I said and you ignored. But few RTSs can claim they have good SPs, if we're drawing comparisons like that.



and multiplayer just sucks if you don't have hundreds of hours of your life to devote to the game to learn every aspect of the game to stand a chance of surviving more then 10 minutes.

Now it's you overrating stuff. If you want to go against national champs, sure you'll need hundreds of hours, but if you just want to play casual or low competitive some hours of playing and reading guides will put you in the right tracks.

Let's put things this way: most sports aren't that fun when you do them alone, but they're sudenly much more enjoyable when you're doing it in groups, or team against team.

And "gasp" you would need to dedicate hours of your life to become good at sports also!



It would kind of being like saying Football is the best game ever because it takes the highest calibure of althletes for its key positions, while ignoring the other aspects of the game.
You're just comparing apples to alien assault tanks here. If anything, Starcraft multiplayer should be compared to footbal multiplayer, aka team vs team.



Its not even a question of "is it better then every other RTS" it is a question of if any game in any genre can be as pefect as people act like Starcraft is.
Again, just in your imagination. Comparing diferent genres of gaming is like comparing apples to oranges. Warcraft III tried to combine RTS and RPG and it ended up nasty.

[Winthur]

and multiplayer just sucks if you don't have hundreds of hours of your life to devote to the game to learn every aspect of the game to stand a chance of surviving more then 10 minutes.

...Just like with ANY other game nowadays that you want to play on Multiplayer, be it Soldat, StarCraft, Civilization or any FPS - you need to practice a bit if your ambition is to take over the multiplayer world (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8u7px_GzWQ). Otherwise you're just smeared if you don't become at least a bit better. Of course, you can also play casually with "normal" people and that is fun too. So what's the point of this statement? :smallconfused:

[Ikialev]

Oh, I also have to add that Portal is VERY overrated.

[RS14]

That's actually quite rude. Good FPSs require just as much thought as good RTSs, or good Turn-Based strategies. The only difference is an increased requirement for environmental awareness, and much quicker thinking. If you charge into a room for of mooks just firing your gun randomly, no taking cover or trying to outmaneuver them, you WILL die.

In short, FPSs are fast-paced thinking games. You have to prioritize, strategize, and execute in the space of, like, thirty seconds. In fact, a good tactical FPS probably requires more thinking than any other genre.

I take issue with your final statement.

There are good thinking FPSs, example: Hidden and Dangerous. But even these don't require as much though as, for example, virtually every serious tactical wargame, ever.

In a good FPS, you wish to know who you're attacking, where they're likely to move, what weapons you need, and where you can retreat to cover. You need to keep in mind useful alternate weapons, like grenades, and mines.

In a good wargame, you wish to know who you're attacking, all at once--their armor, their anti-tank units, their machine-guns, their artillery, their infantry concentrations. You need to lay suppressive fire, artillery, smoke. You need to be prepared for counterattacks, possibly including unanticipated units. You need to have your units deployed to bring your weapons to bear effectively, and be able to continue the fight if your best units are suppressed, immobilized, or destroyed. You need to be aware of terrain and line of sight. You need to be able to use reconnaissance, stealth, assaults, charges, all while maintaining an acceptable overall position on the battlefield.
I've played games where you need to consider your communications link to the units you command, and consider how long it will take for an order to be passed to them.

Overrated games:
Men of War. It was recommended to me as a good tactical wargame, but the controls are awkward and the AI is abysmally stupid--either unable to take any initiative and attack, or able only to make ineffective charges.

Battle for Wesnoth. Any loss of any experienced unit is likely catastrophic. As a result, I too often found myself having to go back to previously saved games. It's just not fun doing so.

[Erloas]

Which I said and you ignored. But few RTSs can claim they have good SPs, if we're drawing comparisons like that.

I never said I was basing the game being overrated just on what you have said. I'm just saying that what you have said *is* an example of why I think it is overrated.

As for how much you have devote to a game to get something good out of multiplayer, you can get fun out of a lot of multiplayer games without being really good (FPSs especially, which is why they have the popularity they do). I never really had any good Starcraft multiplayer games, of course I didn't give the multiplayer that long because of it. I've had a lot more fun in RTS multiplayer in other games though. Because while balance is nice balance does not equal fun. A game can be fun and balanced and a game can be fun and unbalanced, and a game can be not very fun if it is balanced well or not.

[d12]

I probably don't play many games that I end up not liking (and even fewer that I get really fanatical about bashing at every opportunity), because I tend to worry about all the ways that I may not like a game when deliberating over whether I should get it. There have been a few in recent memory that I remember just not caring for, though. Not going to be assigning numbers though, since that seems more of an issue of individual taste than anything else. So this is just going to be a short listing of games that were highly rated/recommended that I just didn't like.

Civ4. I really tried to like it, but I just couldn't. It was just a lot of little irritating things that piled up. For example, ARTILLERY DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY, tech tree moved too fast, building took too long--at least in my experience--and so on. Maybe they got around to fixing things in the expansions, but I wouldn't know.

I ended up not liking Assassin's Creed, but not for the reasons everybody else seems to say. For me it's not so much an issue of repetition or plot or anything like that as much as "Oh my god, is there a way to be decent in combat without being some kind of twitchy jackass?" I seemed to do well enough early on, but then I hit a brick wall and decided to just stop rather than hurl things through other things. Never really did forgive that game.

About a year ago I ended up giving Morrowind a try because my computer decided that it just wasn't worthy of properly running Oblivion anymore. I found myself less than impressed with the whole affair after constantly hearing that it's "zomg soooo much better than Oblivion." In short, I couldn't stand the combat, the magic system sucked, and I have to wonder if Morrowind's map just feels bigger to some people because you move so godawful slowly (for all I know it may very well be larger, but damn do you move slow). And ready to have a bomb dropped on you? I actually liked the level scaling in Oblivion. Why? Cuz I like to explore. When I find a mine or cave or what have you and think that I might want to dig around in there, it means I want to do it now, not in 10 levels. As far as storyline goes, I don't really know Morrowind's storyline, nor do I really care to. The main reason I even know Oblivion's is because it's dumped on you at the beginning and you have to do the Seige of Kvatch quest in order to get gates to start spawning. I leave the sewers, lament not being able to sell the Amulet of Kings, and go about my business. Story just isn't a huge component of enjoying a game for me (I'd take a game with mediocre/no story over one with terrible gameplay), so I tend to ignore such comparisons. But the whole thing seems to be a matter of preference more than anything else, so I usually have trouble getting really worked up about it. Morrowind just wasn't my cup of tea, maybe throw in a pinch of hype backlash, and Bob's your uncle.

All of Halo that I've ever played was the multiplayer deathmatch mode in Halo 3 with my brother and his girlfriend and with a friend, so I couldn't say much about the series as a whole. Doesn't seem to be a bad game (or series, if gameplay isn't too different between them), but I'm not sure about it being piss-your-pants awesome. That might just be fanboys talking though, and just about anything decent enough is going to attract those. And I don't play enough shooters to properly assess comments asserting that there are much better shooters out there. One thing that irritates me though is that you need to dump about a clip and a half into people to kill them. Holy hell. When coupled with regenerating health I'm kind of surprised we were able to kill each other at all. :smalltongue:

[Winthur]

Civ4. I really tried to like it, but I just couldn't. It was just a lot of little irritating things that piled up. For example, ARTILLERY DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY, tech tree moved too fast, building took too long--at least in my experience--and so on. Maybe they got around to fixing things in the expansions, but I wouldn't know.

Well, artillery in the previous games was implemented even worse (in 1 and 2, they were just normal high-offensive units that were slow and pretty much dead when on the defensive, in 3, bombarding was implemented really badly...). I have no problems with the way the artillery works in Civ4 - it just has to be like this, because no one invented anything better.
Tech tree moving too fast? Play Epic or Marathon. Building takes too long? Then your cities have too few production. (PROTIP: Switch to Slavery and abuse the hell out of it.)

[Dihan]

I've tried all of these and none of them managed to hold my attention for long:

Okami
Chrono Trigger
Super Mario RPG

The latter two especially. I was expecting high things from both of them because they've only recently been released in Europe for the first time. I guess I just don't have the rose-tinted goggles that everyone else has for the games.

[Ozymandias]

In general, I think very few games are overrated, and if they are, it's usually just a kick-up from 5/10 to 7/10. I think the problem usually stems from people either judging a game based on what they wanted it to be and not what it is; if you think of games as objects of art/entertainment and not some sort of discrete parcel of 'quality' then everything starts to be somewhat better as long as you're willing to take a "for the people who like FPSs Halo deserves a 10/10" approach, which I am.

Case in point: Mass Effect. I won't argue that as an RPG, it's lackluster, but as a cinematic action game with RPG elements, it's pretty good, and highly polished. It still has flaws, but I'd say its commitment to its lore and the extensiveness that it develops it warrants its generally high review scores.

Also, Bioshock. It's short. The enemy variety is poor, almost nonexistent. It's still a fantastic game, to me, because every room is unique, pretty much, the audio logs and ambience enhance the atmosphere, and there are numerous ways to approach each combat.

Etc, etc. There are some games I think are truly overrated, though, like Oblivion (I'm really surprised that reviewers overlooked the underlying structural flaws of it and were enamored by the shiny graphics).

In some cases, let's say, oh, VtM:Bloodlnes, reviewers were given a rough deal because the game has tremendous, glaring problems but is still amazing. If they rate it 7 or lower, traditional cRPG fans (who tend to be elitist in this regard, and I am not really an exception) will moan, if they rate it 8 or higher a lot of people (the hoi polloi, so to speak) will buy the game, call it buggy and unplayable, and consider everything secondary to the generally poor fps mechanics.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong. It's all really just a matter of opinion.

[d12]

Well, artillery in the previous games was implemented even worse (in 1 and 2, they were just normal high-offensive units that were slow and pretty much dead when on the defensive, in 3, bombarding was implemented really badly...). I have no problems with the way the artillery works in Civ4 - it just has to be like this, because no one invented anything better.
Tech tree moving too fast? Play Epic or Marathon. Building takes too long? Then your cities have too few production. (PROTIP: Switch to Slavery and abuse the hell out of it.)

The main problem I had with artillery in Civ3 was that it doesn't kill units. I don't know if it was just in Conquests that they added lethal aerial bombardment or if it was there the whole time, but at least they got half the equation right. But artillery does. Not. Charge. It's just one of those things I can't get over and every time I see it it just irritates me more.

My cities didn't seem to have production problems. I'm almost wondering if half the problem was noticing how frequently I was getting new available units. "Sweet, I can build tanks now--soon as my capital finishes this praetorian." :smallconfused: I don't really remember much of the civics, aside from liking them in theory, but I don't remember any specifics. And I'm not sure if you really meant it in that context, but I'm a bit ambivalent when I hear you say to "abuse the hell out of" slavery, because I don't generally consider it a hallmark of good game design to require using exploits in order to get things to run smoothly. :smalltongue:

Then there's the general problem I have with Civ games not daring to proceed past the modern era. I had a blast with some of the future units in Call to Power, so I was a bit disappointed when I got Civ3 and saw nothing past modern armor and such.

[Inhuman Bot]

Super Mario RPG


I just got this last week, and found it pretty fun, so it's not all nostalgia.

Also, people should consider explaining reason for dislikeing games, as to make it seem less like trolling. :smalltongue:

[RS14]

The main problem I had with artillery in Civ3 was that it doesn't kill units. I don't know if it was just in Conquests that they added lethal aerial bombardment or if it was there the whole time, but at least they got half the equation right. But artillery does. not. charge. It's just one of those things I can't get over and every time I see it it just irritates me more.


Non-nuclear bombardment doesn't destroy units in real life. You'll never hear of an artillery unit taking an objective, because no matter how heavy the shelling, casualties will be roughly proportional to the size of the enemy force remaining. The purpose of artillery is to weaken and demoralize an enemy unit such that it cannot provide meaningful resistance to a ground assault, and to demolish fortifications, strongpoints, and other infrastructure. The same can be said of tactical airpower.

On a small scale, both artillery and airstrikes can be used to target individual vehicles and points of resistance, of course, and are very lethal. But this can't be effectively applied on the scale of a brigade or division.

Now, it was absurd to extend this to nuclear weapons, which are simply too weak all across the board.

[Artanis]

I have to disagree with a lot of the comments about multiplayer and old games. Whining 12-year-olds and dynamic shadows do not somehow make a game good. I'll take X-Com and GalCiv 2 over some half-assed POS whose only redeeming qualities are multiplayer and high poly counts.

I also think that games should be judged relative to what they are. Yes, WoW is a mindless, soul-destroying grindfest, but that shouldn't count against it because that's the entire point of an MMO. It's like saying that DOOM is overrated because it forces you to shoot things while in a first-person perspective, or that Alpha Centauri is overrated because it's turn-based and has a planet-sized scope.


At any rate...

DOOM 2: 1
--IMO, the best thing about the original DOOM was the fear. The knowledge that hordes of demons waited in the darkness around the next corner, waiting to tear into your ever-dwindling reserves of health and ammo. DOOM 2 got rid of that in order to emphasize the bloodbath part of the game.

Summoner: 5.
--It was a terrible game, everybody knew it was a terrible game, the entire premise was ruined by the very mechanic it used, but - and here's why it's overrated - they made a sequel. The developers had to have drastically overrated it to make a decision like that.

Dawn of War: Dark Crusade: 3
--If you're going to have singleplayer, have singleplayer, not the downright insulting excuse for a campaign in DC. If you're going to have multiplayer, try to remember that it's a lot easier to balance something when you DON'T GIVE IT AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT ECONOMIC SYSTEM.

Bioshock: 1
--This is a great game. I really, truly mean that. It deserves every point of its high ratings. In any objective sense, it is downright amazing. But it lacks the "magic", so to speak, of System Shock and System Shock 2. By any metric you can come up with, Bioshock deserves to be on the same level as them...but when you play the three games, Bioshock just doesn't quite measure up.

[Yora]

I think Doom 2 was praised for it's innovative multiplayer mode.
Which makes this thing about crap games with great multiplayer much older than I thought. :smallbiggrin:

[Athaniar]

I know two other games: NWN 2 and KotOR 2. Especially the latter. I know many agree with me on NWN 2 (there was a thread on that some time ago), but most tend to disagree with me on the latter. I don't know, I just found KotOR 2's story uninteresting, with uninteresting characters (especially the main villain, but not HK-47, of course) and locations.

[Yora]

I think Jade Empire was a huge disappointment. But I don't know if it has been hyped that much.

[d12]

Non-nuclear bombardment doesn't destroy units in real life. You'll never hear of an artillery unit taking an objective, because no matter how heavy the shelling, casualties will be roughly proportional to the size of the enemy force remaining. The purpose of artillery is to weaken and demoralize an enemy unit such that it cannot provide meaningful resistance to a ground assault, and to demolish fortifications, strongpoints, and other infrastructure. The same can be said of tactical airpower.

On a small scale, both artillery and airstrikes can be used to target individual vehicles and points of resistance, of course, and are very lethal. But this can't be effectively applied on the scale of a brigade or division.

Now, it was absurd to extend this to nuclear weapons, which are simply too weak all across the board.

"Weaken and demoralize an enemy unit such that it cannot provide meaningful resistance to a ground assault" you say? So almost as if the unit isn't there? I know there's a way for games to handle stuff like that...

Yes, it's true that artillery doesn't capture positions, but I've never seen a bombard-to-make-the-city-mine attack happen in a Civ game. I don't know if they allow artillery units to move into undefended enemy cities, which I could possibly agree with not allowing. It's just never occurred to me to try capturing a city with an artillery unit.

As far as nukes are concerned though, I don't think I've ever used a nuke in Civ3. My only real experience with nuclear-type weapons in civ-like games are nukes in Call to Power, which killed 3/4 of a city and destroyed all units in the target square and all immediately surrounding squares (don't remember the calculations, if any, for tile improvement destruction). Well, and terror stars in Galactic Civilizations, but those destroyed entire star systems, so it's a slightly different scale.

[RS14]

"Weaken and demoralize an enemy unit such that it cannot provide meaningful resistance to a ground assault" you say? So almost as if the unit isn't there? I know there's a way for games to handle stuff like that...

In Civ III, this is modeled by the target units having only 1hp remaining. Thus the provide a small but non-negligible defensive value. In particular, the unit providing no meaningful resistance is modeled by the defender dying, inflicting no losses. But advances do not always go as planned, and there is some chance that no matter what the bombardment, a unit will remain to resist. Consider the Battle of Berlin--the Soviets brought 41,000 artillery pieces and 3,000 Katyusha launchers, and the Germans still put up stiff resistance.



Yes, it's true that artillery doesn't capture positions, but I've never seen a bombard-to-make-the-city-mine attack happen in a Civ game. I don't know if they allow artillery units to move into undefended enemy cities, which I could possibly agree with not allowing. It's just never occurred to me to try capturing a city with an artillery unit.
Bombarding the crap out of stuff does work well. It will be insufficient on its own, however.

[SandroTheMaster]

1 Halo, Gears of Wars - Nothing really that bad about these two games. I just don't see what warrants that much of a hype about them. They're fun enough, but I've played better games by the dozen. And Gears of Wars is sometimes too damn focused on cover. Sure, cover is a important part of firearm warfare, but the enemies sometimes are tough enough to just come in charging at your front soaking up bullets, and if 3-4 do so at the same time your squad doesn't have the firepower to stop them in their tracks, while you can't show your ugly face for 2 seconds without being turned into jelly.If you're making me brace for cover in a conventional firearm battle, at least give the same rules to the enemies. It wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that once an enemy breaches your cover, in the time you take to kill him you get surrounded...

2 Oblivion - Oblivion is pretty neat in a lot of ways, but really, it is a lackluster in for me in several others. The exact same reasons that left d12 to love Oblivion led me to dislike it. Simply put, the level scaling leaves you without any sense of accomplishment. When you are level 3 and find a goblin, you sweat a bit and bring the bastard down. Then you're level 28 with epic loot and find a goblin and now it may even be HARDER to take it down because you didn't evolve properly, you aren't with the amount of armor you were supposed to or your weapon isn't tweaked with the right enchantments for your level. Or at best you have precisely as much work dispatching it, just takes considerably longer (it is a GOBLIN!). As for stronger foes, I like to reach them, finding myself outmatched and retreating, evolving to later come back and see if I'm up to the challange. An RPG NEEDS that sense of accomplishment. Overall I also felt the RP parts of the game were terribly downplayed. I'd like to, you know, have some sort of option to join the necromancers and say "f*** you" to the Mage's Guild. RPGs should lend you some freedom to act, not just to explore. At least they left most of these issues open to the public to "fix" with mods.

3 Final Fantasy (in general) - Really, the biggest problem here is that they're Japanese RPGs. And as far as Japanese RPGs goes, the Final Fantasy ones are the most Hyped. Simply said, I've never considered an Final Fantasy an RPG. Sure, it has stats, equipment and other RPG elements, but it lacks the RP of the genre, and that's one of the biggest reasons I play RPGs at all. I'd put Disgaea here too, but I always saw that game as a huge self-parody and was funny enough as that (considering I didn't bother to get into the intricacies of reaching level 9999 and doing trillions upon trillions of damage).

4 Starcraft - I remember at its time, Starcraft was RIDICULOUSLY unbalanced. So much so that if you were zerg, you just needed to rush to your first 2 zerglings and you'd win. Done. There wasn't a possible strategy against that because the Zergs could simply make 2 infantry units right off the bat that could obliterate a small force of workers and the enemy couldn't POSSIBLY defend against it, with more on the way. And if you went with protoss you might as well just give up. The protoss didn't stand a chance against anything in serious multiplayer. The Humans could put up a fight, but only if the Zergs didn't instantly capitalize on the zerglings. Sure, NOW it is balanced, but pretty much none of the asymmetrical Strategy games nowdays is given THAT much time to be polished. Even now, I find Starcraft a disgusting example of RTS because it isn't so much about tactics as it is about having the frame-and-sprite perfect dexterity to, say, have your Zealot hit exactly 2 swings at a zergling before retreating to get his shield battery up, while at that sending an army at probes to block and try to kill off a zergling or two, then coming back and hitting exactly 2 swings again. Seriously, that's the strat for protoss to defend against Zerg rush (with 4 zerglings). Its something you don't expect from FPS twitchers. Seriously, how a "Strategy" game can call itself so if a game ends in 2 minutes? As the moment the opponent counteracts your initial offensive you're off too crippled to do anything else? Also, there are tons of Strategy games out there that are much better and doesn't rely on inhuman reflexes.

5 Metal Gear Solid (all of them), Zelda (all of them) - I tried. I really ****ing tried. But I can't get myself to enjoy these games, much less like them. I'm used to stupid plots, but you generally need an overall insight of a plot in order to realize how stupid it is. In MGS that realization comes from every single sentence spurted from every single character. And even IF I ignore the story altogether and concentrate on the gameplay, MGS has to have the worst controls ever graced into a game. Its ridiculous. Some friends of mine who like the game also think the controls are bad, but say they're something you have to endure in order to enjoy the game (which just outright confuses me). As for Zelda, it always seemed like the game was an action RPG with EXTREMELY simplified RPG elements. The story is no better or worse than most, but not only the RPG term is the one invented in Japan that I'm used to (the one where the "Role-Playing" part of the name is completely and utterly ignored), but everything else too. Then I tried to ignore it as an RPG and play it as just a plain action game. Although it was halfway decent that way, it was just a joyless experience for me. It wasn't really fun as a game, and to think about it, it was pretty damn close to the gameplay of most MMOs without the social portion.

[d12]

In Civ III, this is modeled by the target units having only 1hp remaining.

Yeah, I knew you'd pull that one out. Believe me, 1hp is plenty resistance. :smalltongue: The "dogged resistance in the face of overwhelming bombardment" bit seems to be done well enough in the form of missing a lot and just having a lot more units in cities than I was banking on now and then. Guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree. Yeah, it's annoying to me, but not enough to make me stop playing Civ3. I mean, at least bombers "work right." :smalltongue:


The exact same reasons that left d12 to love Oblivion led me to dislike it. Simply put, the level scaling leaves you without any sense of accomplishment. When you are level 3 and find a goblin, you sweat a bit and bring the bastard down. Then you're level 28 with epic loot and find a goblin and now it may even be HARDER to take it down because you didn't evolve properly, you aren't with the amount of armor you were supposed to or your weapon isn't tweaked with the right enchantments for your level. Or at best you have precisely as much work dispatching it, just takes considerably longer (it is a GOBLIN!). As for stronger foes, I like to reach them, finding myself outmatched and retreating, evolving to later come back and see if I'm up to the challange. An RPG NEEDS that sense of accomplishment. Overall I also felt the RP parts of the game were terribly downplayed. I'd like to, you know, have some sort of option to join the necromancers and say "f*** you" to the Mage's Guild. RPGs should lend you some freedom to act, not just to explore. At least they left most of these issues open to the public to "fix" with mods.

To be totally honest, I can see how somebody may not like stuff like that, so I don't generally get worked up about people not liking those aspects of the game. They don't generally bother me though. The accomplishments bit for me in Oblivion tends to be in exploring, doing some good old fashioned fighting, running into newer monsters now and then, getting a good set of equipment from loot and soulgems/sigil stones, and stuff like that. And yeah, that's not the first time I've heard people complaining about scaling hurting them due to how they build characters. Maybe the scaling system just fits the way I like to play more, so it goes back to preference again. The thing that just irritates me is the Morrowhiners (as I once heard them described). I'm sure it's a perfectly cromulent game in its own right, but do not pretend it's an objective distinction, because I've played it and it was balls in comparison for me. But getting worked up over things that are mostly preference and don't actually add up to anything probably isn't good for your health, so whatever.

[MickJay]

I think Jade Empire was a huge disappointment. But I don't know if it has been hyped that much.

I actually enjoyed it, most of the time, but the "morality/philosophy" system definitely did not live up to my expectations; I found other aspects of the game to be quite good, though. What made it such a disappointment for you?

Dungeon Lords were far overrated, I think The game got quite good reviews, but the "random encounter" system just killed the game for me (every 15 seconds, you're attacked by a new group of bandits or monsters, while the trips on foot typically took a few minutes to get from place to place). I found that simply boring (not to mention ridiculous). Also, there was easy, if boring, way of getting practically unlimited xp, which made it even worse.

[AgentPaper]

I'm actually wondering why people say WoW is overrated. Of course, not because it's super-crazy-awesome, (though I do enjoy playing it immensely) but because all I ever hear is people going on and on (and on and on and on) about how much they hate the game. The only people that seem to like it are the ones that play it, and often not even then. It's like a cult classic, except the cult is made up of a few million people instead of a few hundred. :smallconfused:

[Winthur]

Starcraft - I remember at its time, Starcraft was RIDICULOUSLY unbalanced. So much so that if you were zerg, you just needed to rush to your first 2 zerglings and you'd win. Done. There wasn't a possible strategy against that because the Zergs could simply make 2 infantry units right off the bat that could obliterate a small force of workers and the enemy couldn't POSSIBLY defend against it, with more on the way. And if you went with protoss you might as well just give up. The protoss didn't stand a chance against anything in serious multiplayer. The Humans could put up a fight, but only if the Zergs didn't instantly capitalize on the zerglings. Sure, NOW it is balanced, but pretty much none of the asymmetrical Strategy games nowdays is given THAT much time to be polished. Even now, I find Starcraft a disgusting example of RTS because it isn't so much about tactics as it is about having the frame-and-sprite perfect dexterity to, say, have your Zealot hit exactly 2 swings at a zergling before retreating to get his shield battery up, while at that sending an army at probes to block and try to kill off a zergling or two, then coming back and hitting exactly 2 swings again. Seriously, that's the strat for protoss to defend against Zerg rush (with 4 zerglings). Its something you don't expect from FPS twitchers. Seriously, how a "Strategy" game can call itself so if a game ends in 2 minutes? As the moment the opponent counteracts your initial offensive you're off too crippled to do anything else? Also, there are tons of Strategy games out there that are much better and doesn't rely on inhuman reflexes.

SandroTheMaster! He's gonna take you back to the past to play StarCraft back when it sucked...

Yeah, sure. Except that most of what you are saying is wrong. Shield Battery in defense against a rush? Zerg use, and always used, SIX Zerglings for an early rush, and to defend even against this kind of barrage a Protoss doesn't build a Battery. Most of the games on even "pre-intermediate" level end in about 20 minutes, not 2. Rush was imba back when the pool costed 150 minerals, true.

Rushes are "all-in" builds that are and always will, in any RTS game, sacrifice long term goals for a quick victory. If it works, you win or you cripple your opponent. If it doesn't, you're pretty much screwed. There's nothing wrong with that. That's strategy.

There were many imbalances with it, but in general, most of the time it was maps that were imbalanced, not the game itself.
And why are we talking about the past of StarCraft? Stop living in the past! It's gone!

It's like arguing that Super Mario Bros. was just a simple platformer game, therefore any other game after it must be "overrated" too.

And look at the big picture. The greatest bread & butter RTS games of that time were...
Total Annihilation. Which I'd call not overrated, but overhyped, only because a ton of people claim how StarCraft "won" against it just because TA wasn't so hyped in media and commercials.
Yeah, it IS a great RTS game, but it doesn't have a ton of conveniences StarCraft has (which you don't notice usually if you are not a big fan of using hotkeys), not to mention no three unique races.
C&C. And its infamous tank rushes - great, but given how many sequels it spawned, it never became as "powerful" as SC.
WarCraft 2. Which was also a Blizzard production. And it's older. So?
Dune 2. A precursor, but also pretty old as well.

So, back then, StarCraft was one of the prime choices. Now it also is. ALSO with newbies. You REALLY don't need monkey skills to win in this game. If it's your thing, just play Fastest Possible Map or Big Game Hunters! Ton of noobs play there, and there's nothing wrong with that. Or find a few friends and play casually. Or go find an UMS! Or if you're willing to really immerse yourself in the game, you may go one step beyond and grind out those games on ICCup. Fun for the whole family!


3 Final Fantasy (in general) - Really, the biggest problem here is that they're Japanese RPGs. And as far as Japanese RPGs goes, the Final Fantasy ones are the most Hyped. Simply said, I've never considered an Final Fantasy an RPG. Sure, it has stats, equipment and other RPG elements, but it lacks the RP of the genre, and that's one of the biggest reasons I play RPGs at all. I'd put Disgaea here too, but I always saw that game as a huge self-parody and was funny enough as that (considering I didn't bother to get into the intricacies of reaching level 9999 and doing trillions upon trillions of damage).

Because the power of FF are great storylines, gameplay that allows a ton of approaches and lets you do things your way + use some imagination, and all the fun with classes. It's simply different, but let me tell you my trade secret. If you want to relax, take a gamepad, turn on a Final Fantasy game (in my case, on emulator only, sadly) and sit on some sort of couch or whatever. Really relaxing.

[Winterwind]

I've seen quite a few games mentioned here that I think are most certainly not overrated; in some cases, I even think they are underrated. I see no purpose in defending them though, as this thread pretty much just serves for people to state what they dislike, and there is little point discussing taste.

I feel I should say something though when people start making claims that are blatantly not true.


Even now, I find Starcraft a disgusting example of RTS because it isn't so much about tactics as it is about having the frame-and-sprite perfect dexterity to, say, have your Zealot hit exactly 2 swings at a zergling before retreating to get his shield battery up, while at that sending an army at probes to block and try to kill off a zergling or two, then coming back and hitting exactly 2 swings again. Seriously, that's the strat for protoss to defend against Zerg rush (with 4 zerglings).Actually, no, it's a strat for Protoss that you just made up. Nowhere in all of StarCraft is it required to micro with such precision to get off exactly a certain number of hits before running. What you describe here goes beyond the amount of micro necessary for progamer play - nevermind that of normal players - by so many magnitudes, it's nothing short of ludicruous.
And Protoss hardly even get shield batteries.


Its something you don't expect from FPS twitchers. Seriously, how a "Strategy" game can call itself so if a game ends in 2 minutes? As the moment the opponent counteracts your initial offensive you're off too crippled to do anything else?I think the only time I've seen a StarCraft game end within 2 minutes - such things as the opponent disconnecting excluded - was once when a player tried to rush with his initial workers. That's once amongst several thousand games, mind you. Typically, StarCraft matches go about 15 minutes, and sometimes decidedly longer. Games of less than 10 minutes are very rare.

[Winthur]

I think the only time I've seen a StarCraft game end within 2 minutes - such things as the opponent disconnecting excluded - was once when a player tried to rush with his initial workers. That's once amongst several thousand games, mind you. Typically, StarCraft matches go about 15 minutes, and sometimes decidedly longer. Games of less than 10 minutes are very rare.

It's usually like this.
Around 3 minutes - early Zerg rush game
~7-10 minutes - some sort of all-in build that isn't exactly a early game rush, but is supposed to take out your enemy while sacrificing everything else. For example: hydralisks from 2-3 hatcheries, aimed at destroying a Protoss' Fast Expansion. If it works, you probably won, if it doesn't, you're at huge disadvantage.
15 minutes - both sides are good players. Expand, build up their armies to respectable amounts, and through smart use of them one of them wins.
20 minutes - both sides are average players. Expand, build up their armies to respectable amounts, and through smart use of them one of them wins.
30-40 minutes - either a huge late-game strife of two great players who use the latest of their resources, or just because you're not confident enough in your units, so you locked your enemy inside his base, expanded everywhere, and only then proceeded to destroy him. Or because one player got the advantage, the other turtled and tried to come back with harassment and turtling.
3 hours - your opponent doesn't even care anymore, so he's easy pickings, and your nickname is Dunaj.

As you can see, most of the SC games that fit under long-winded epics of huge battles between various units requiring various strategies and build orders are within the timeline of mere 15 minutes. And that's how most people will play, because it's much easier to macro than to micro, and not everyone feels confident enough to go on with offensive builds that have the potential of ending the game early.

[SandroTheMaster]

To be totally honest, I can see how somebody may not like stuff like that, so I don't generally get worked up about people not liking those aspects of the game. They don't generally bother me though. The accomplishments bit for me in Oblivion tends to be in exploring, doing some good old fashioned fighting, running into newer monsters now and then, getting a good set of equipment from loot and soulgems/sigil stones, and stuff like that. And yeah, that's not the first time I've heard people complaining about scaling hurting them due to how they build characters. Maybe the scaling system just fits the way I like to play more, so it goes back to preference again. The thing that just irritates me is the Morrowhiners (as I once heard them described). I'm sure it's a perfectly cromulent game in its own right, but do not pretend it's an objective distinction, because I've played it and it was balls in comparison for me. But getting worked up over things that are mostly preference and don't actually add up to anything probably isn't good for your health, so whatever.

For me I liked Morrowind quite a bit. Mostly on how much deeper the character customization and evolution worked out. The enchantment mechanics in Morrowind were mind-boggling deep. Its so much stuff that made the sequel feel terribly dumbed down in these aspects. The greatest problem is how they took the horses away, but at least you could still fast-travel with in these giant fleas and boats, so going from city to city wasn't that bad. The bad part was the game pretty much forcing you to be mage to an extent. Teleport spells and the convenience that is the Mages Guild's portals made it senseless to not be in the Mages Guild. For real transport you also had much more options than Oblivion, where you could only use a horse... you had a Jump Spell, that with a simple 1 second duration and max power was enough to cut traveling time considerably; levitation, that made trekking through mountains less of a hassle (and was actually required to get around in your Mage Tower); Feather was much more important as the lightness of your character determined how fast he ran and how far he jumped; and some enhancement spells. But again, that reinforced the fact that the game forced you to be a mage to an extent...

EDIT: And thus the SC worshippers come for the rescue... my point is that Starcraft, as an Asymmetrical RTS, only became that balanced after years of balancing that nowdays Asymmetrical RTS are judged only by their balance at LAUNCH and never looked upon again. And if you think I made up that strat, that is the counter to what is know as "4 pool zerg rush". Look it up. Sure, I picked the most ridiculous case possible, but it is a good sum of my impressions about SC.

[Oslecamo]

2 Oblivion - Oblivion is pretty neat in a lot of ways, but really, it is a lackluster in for me in several others. The exact same reasons that left d12 to love Oblivion led me to dislike it. Simply put, the level scaling leaves you without any sense of accomplishment. When you are level 3 and find a goblin, you sweat a bit and bring the bastard down. Then you're level 28 with epic loot and find a goblin and now it may even be HARDER to take it down because you didn't evolve properly, you aren't with the amount of armor you were supposed to or your weapon isn't tweaked with the right enchantments for your level. Or at best you have precisely as much work dispatching it, just takes considerably longer (it is a GOBLIN!). As for stronger foes, I like to reach them, finding myself outmatched and retreating, evolving to later come back and see if I'm up to the challange. An RPG NEEDS that sense of accomplishment. Overall I also felt the RP parts of the game were terribly downplayed. I'd like to, you know, have some sort of option to join the necromancers and say "f*** you" to the Mage's Guild. RPGs should lend you some freedom to act, not just to explore. At least they left most of these issues open to the public to "fix" with mods.


I must say that luckily there's hope for Oblivion! MODS!

OOO, for example, completely revamps the leveling system, by caping the limit of monsters.

That goblin? Sure, for the first 6 or something levels of your adventure, he's gonna level up with you, but after that, he stops geting stronger! He remains a lousy lv 6 or something goblin while you level up!

Of course, now start to spawn stronger enemies besides goblins near that goblin lair, like bloodthirsty amazons. Wich whoever will also stop leveling up when you reach higher level X. Or the number of goblins spawned may increase, perhaps with a goblin champion and everything, wich altough tough it's much more rewarding to defeat.

When you eventualy reach much higher levels, all monsters stop leveling up with you, allowing you to become a living god on earth wich crushes all who opose him, like in most RPGs!

Not only that, OOO, tweaks a lot of other important stuff, like making treasure in chests not level dependant, meaning that if you can sneak inside that lord's castle at level 2 and if get out alive, you'll walk out with thousands of gold in items, but if you sneak inside a pesant's house, don't expect to find anything too usefull, no matter what level you are. Plus new items and revamp of the magic system to nerf the most broken effects but at the same time rewarding you for specializing in magic.

And that's just one mod, there's plenty of others out there. Oblivion is one of those games wich works MUCH better with fan content.

[SandroTheMaster]

I must say that luckily there's hope for Oblivion! MODS!

OOO, for example, completely revamps the leveling system, by caping the limit of monsters.

That goblin? Sure, for the first 6 or something levels of your adventure, he's gonna level up with you, but after that, he stops geting stronger! He remains a lousy lv 6 or something goblin while you level up!

Of course, now start to spawn stronger enemies besides goblins near that goblin lair, like bloodthirsty amazons. Wich whoever will also stop leveling up when you reach higher level X. Or the number of goblins spawned may increase, perhaps with a goblin champion and everything, wich altough tough it's much more rewarding to defeat.

When you eventualy reach much higher levels, all monsters stop leveling up with you, allowing you to become a living god on earth wich crushes all who opose him, like in most RPGs!

Not only that, OOO, tweaks a lot of other important stuff, like making treasure in chests not level dependant, meaning that if you can sneak inside that lord's castle at level 2 and if get out alive, you'll walk out with thousands of gold in items, but if you sneak inside a pesant's house, don't expect to find anything too usefull, no matter what level you are. Plus new items and revamp of the magic system to nerf the most broken effects but at the same time rewarding you for specializing in magic.

And that's just one mod, there's plenty of others out there. Oblivion is one of those games wich works MUCH better with fan content.

That's what I was talking about in my last sentence, mainly. But we're talking about the games as they're made, not how they're changed. Certain mods (like, say, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress) completely changes the game and can be considered games of their own right, but that's not the case.

[Mewtarthio]

Overall I also felt the RP parts of the game were terribly downplayed. I'd like to, you know, have some sort of option to join the necromancers and say "f*** you" to the Mage's Guild.

To be honest, this was the only problem I had with Oblivion, but it was a real game-breaker for me. The mechanics are far and away superior to those of Morrowind, combat is actually fun instead of a chore, custom enchantment and potion-making are superior (and, no, I don't think "dumbing down" is bad if you make what was a seriously overpowered mechanic in the hands of skilled players both more balanced and more accessible), and the quests showed more variety and were more fun.

The RP aspect killed it for me, though. For instance, in the Mages' Guild questline, there's a mission in which you meet with a mage who turns out to be a traitor and mistakenly believes you are here to join her cause. I suppose I could buy that they didn't want to make an entire new questline in which you join the necromancers and do necromantic things, but they don't even give you the option to play along long enough steal the artifact you're looking for safely, or even just stab her in the back. No, you have to tell her "Oh, sorry, I'm afraid you've been misinformed; you see, I'm really one of the good guys, so it looks like we'll have to kill each other now."

Worse, I'm also in the Dark Brotherhood, which includes a quests in which you kill, among other people, your own trusting allies, a helpless old lady, and an innocent young girl, so the game obviously shouldn't assume I'm just that honorable.

[Winthur]

EDIT: And thus the SC worshippers come for the rescue... my point is that Starcraft, as an Asymmetrical RTS, only became that balanced after years of balancing that nowdays Asymmetrical RTS are judged only by their balance at LAUNCH and never looked upon again. And if you think I made up that strat, that is the counter to what is know as "4 pool zerg rush". Look it up. Sure, I picked the most ridiculous case possible, but it is a good sum of my impressions about SC.

What is an assymetrical RTS? Something like this?
http://images48.fotosik.pl/219/da84778a1dfb447cmed.jpg (http://www.fotosik.pl)
Clearly, the Dragoons on the right are in a different position than Dragoons on the left, and there are more of them. So it's kinda assymetrical.
I don't get your point.
And besides, if you meant balance, then that's not true. In WarCraft 3, which still hasn't perfected in balance (at least from what I see in internet debates), it's being patched. And people look at this game from the perspective of the latest patch. They look at EVERY game from the perspective of the latest patch, but there's a reason why it's commonly said that Blizzard Real Time Strategies are the best games of their genre.

What are you describing here is because most of the companies keep making new RTS games instead of polishing their older one. Like Command & Conquer series. (But in my opinion, they get progressively worse. Original C&C and RA FTW! Generals - booooo! Although Jennifer Morrison as Kirce in C&C3 makes me want to play it. :smalltongue: ).

And BTW: So what if it's been balanced only after years of playing? Back in the days of the "imbalance" you're talking about, StarCraft was still a great choice for multiplaying.

And Korea adopted StarCraft as its national sport in 2000. It's 2009 now. And the game is still being patched. And it's still loved worldwide. So tell me, WHAT exactly is your point? The game needs patching, therefore it sucks?

And lastly - dude, this community has a whole group that's playing StarCraft every Saturday, and all of those people know well what is 4 pool. Only that what you're describing is some inert version (only 2-4 zerglings for a rush? What?), and the countertactics you've proposed for it are definitely invalid. Not to mention that you're exaggerating - after the patch that replaced the 150 minerals for 200 minerals, the Zerg rush has been rendered pretty defendable. And by the way, when that was an issue, players made their own idea of countering the rush. Simply making a game like "1v1 no rush". Which was wildly popular even in WC2, where balance issues are nonexistant (because there are little differences, mainly in spells and graphics for Humans and Orcs), just because people wanted to play longer, more satisfying games.

I have no idea for a logical conclusion to this post, so let me end this Monty Python style. (I could also get some help from Candlejack, but he jus

[Cubey]

So, once again we have a thread which people will just use to bash games they don't like and call them not only bad (because "I don't like X" == "X is a piece of crap", obviously), but also call them popular and use it as an excuse to feel superior over those who play those games, stupid herd of sheeple who only play titles that are popular!

That was hell of a long sentence.

Also, "popular" titles are bashed so often on forums like this that it seems liking a popular title is actually a minority opinion. So is disliking a cult following or indy title.

Which I'm going to do just now! Arcanum is overrated IMHO. I couldn't get into it at all. There, I said it. The post brought to you by someone who likes MMOs, Final Fantasy, Bioshock, and didn't play Halo (just the demo) but probably would find it at least okay if he did.
I also like ICO and Dwarf Fortress.

[SandroTheMaster]

Gods! Asymmetrical as in there are different sides who play differently to each other, instead of close to identical ones.

[Winterwind]

And if you think I made up that strat, that is the counter to what is know as "4 pool zerg rush". Look it up. Sure, I picked the most ridiculous case possible, but it is a good sum of my impressions about SC.As often as you keep saying that, no, that is not the counter to anything. The counter to a 4 pool zerg rush is proper worker micro (which involves stacking the workers and using them for hit and run attacks, nothing nearly as complex as what you describe) until the first zealot finishes, or just using a few probes in conjunction with a zealot if it already has.

Oh, and as for "here come the SC defenders", you might note I didn't say anything to Erloas or anybody else who mentioned StarCraft before in this thread. That's because I do accept that some people think SC is overrated, and they are free to believe so; I disagree, but certainly won't argue with them about that. I only responded to you because, unlike their subjective opinions, you made statements that are objectively wrong.

[SandroTheMaster]

As often as you keep saying that, no, that is not the counter to anything. The counter to a 4 pool zerg rush is proper worker micro (which involves stacking the workers and using them for hit and run attacks, nothing nearly as complex as what you describe) until the first zealot finishes, or just using a few probes in conjunction with a zealot if it already has.

Oh, and as for "here come the SC defenders", you might note I didn't say anything to Erloas or anybody else who mentioned StarCraft before in this thread. That's because I do accept that some people think SC is overrated, and they are free to believe so; I disagree, but certainly won't argue with them about that. I only responded to you because, unlike their subjective opinions, you made statements that are objectively wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqto9P_cZaA

From my understanding, the battery makes the zealots give you a bigger bang for your buck, as long as you keep recharging them the second their shields go down. Plus it is another piece of structure to block off zerglings. Still, you need to back the Zealot away after 1-2 strikes to make the most of it and avoid the zealot from being overwhelmed using the probes to block off and swarm the lings. And yadda, yadda, yadda... You're still playing a strategy game where faltering for half a second will screw you over (actually, the loser always seem to be the first the flinch in these rush scenarios). And while there are the "no rushes" games, the majority of the SC fanbase will chew you over if so much as ask for it. And finally going for "no rush" is the same as ignoring tools the game gives you to alter the gameplay experience. It sure is an option, but not by the game's set rules.

And about patching, gaming media that offer reviews (like the giants of the sort of GameSpot and the like) only ever analyses the game at launch, and give you the impression at that, and that makes or breaks the games nowdays (I've seem quite a few that sank just because they were imbalanced at launch, no matter they fixed most of it in their very first patch). To appraise SC in different terms is fair how? (I played the game back them, people just exited the game if you went with Zerg and zerg simply won everybody, the games could only be balanced if played with the same factions, which was boring, saying the game was the best then is ignoring how much nitpicky and issues there was to play multiplayer back then. The game only kept itself afloat initially long enough to be balanced because of the single-player experience).

[Myrmex]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mqto9P_cZaA

From my understanding, the battery makes the zealots give you a bigger bang for your buck, as long as you keep recharging them the second their shields go down. Plus it is another piece of structure to block off zerglings. Still, you need to back the Zealot away after 1-2 strikes to make the most of it and avoid the zealot from being overwhelmed using the probes to block off and swarm the lings. And yadda, yadda, yadda... You're still playing a strategy game where faltering for half a second will screw you over (actually, the loser always seem to be the first the flinch in these rush scenarios). And while there are the "no rushes" games, the majority of the SC fanbase will chew you over if so much as ask for it. And finally going for "no rush" is the same as ignoring tools the game gives you to alter the gameplay experience. It sure is an option, but not by the game's set rules.

And about patching, gaming media that offer reviews (like the giants of the sort of GameSpot and the like) only ever analyses the game at launch, and give you the impression at that, and that makes or breaks the games nowdays (I've seem quite a few that sank just because they were imbalanced at launch, no matter they fixed most of it in their very first patch). To appraise SC in different terms is fair how? (I played the game back them, people just exited the game if you went with Zerg and zerg simply won everybody, the games could only be balanced if played with the same factions, which was boring, saying the game was the best then is ignoring how much nitpicky and issues there was to play multiplayer back then. The game only kept itself afloat long enough to be balanced because of the single-player experience).

You don't like SC because you aren't a fan of that particular type of game, so therefore it's overrated?

[Zevox]

Ocarina of Time, which is, IMO, as much better than ANY FPS, no matter what the graphics or story, .
Agreed. Ocarina of Time is a fantastic example of the action-adventure genre, and its age has only served to give it more inferior games to be compared to, not to make the game look any worse. Sure, the story is simple, but also epic in scope and feel, and the gameplay and length are what have always been its strong suits and what sets it apart even from the rest of the Zelda series.

And I just don't like shooters, so yeah, pretty much by default Ocarina is better than any FPS in my book.


Ocarina of Time is good, but (almost) everything it did Majora's Mask did better.
Hardly. Majora was good, but way too short for its own good (only 4 dungeons? Really?), and the story was pretty lame (the main villain was an emo skull kid, for pete's sake). Good concept, not so great execution. Whereas Ocarina took a basic, already well-worn concept and churned out fantastic execution.

I will give Majora one thing over Ocarina, though: the Zora Mask created the best underwater Zelda areas ever.

Anyway, for my own "overrated games," here ya' go. Let me preface this with a reminder that this is all my subjective opinion.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: 3.5. I find it difficult to believe people like this game much, as I find it to be the bottom of the barrel of its genre, yet there seem to be those that do. Honestly, the only good part about it was the character customization, which was in fact quite good. Beyond that you had a poorly executed and confusing story, uninteresting characters, and sub-par gameplay (ugh, those laws...). I didn't even bother with its sequel after hearing it was pretty similar in most regards to the first.

Final Fantasy Tactics: 2. Certainly better than its "advanced" counterpart, but it had its own problems, particularly when it comes to the poor translation. Definitely not the epic example of the tactical RPG genre some fans make it out to be.

Fable: 4. Ouch. This was a pretty boring action RPG. Simplistic, uninteresting combat; poor story; short, boring side quests - in short, it's a poster boy for why I prefer JRPGs to western ones (other than Bioware's). The only redeeming quality was that playing a pure mage was some fun.

Final Fantasy (in general): 2. Now, I'm a JRPG fan - they're basically my favorite genre. But I've only within the past year or so gotten to play this series, and I must say, I've been largely disappointed. The "active time battle" combat system is a terrible attempt to meld turn-based and real-time gameplay which mars every game it appears in, save one, which isn't a Final Fantasy game (I'll mention that later). Now, I haven't played the entire series - far from it, I've only played 4, 8, 9, 10, 10-2, a demo of 12, and some spin-offs - but what I have played really has not lived up to the hype (except 10-2, which even the fans of the series admit sucks). 10 was the best of it, and even it was only pretty good, not great (and one big reason it is the one I liked best is that it doesn't have the ATB combat system, but rather a true turn-based one). 4 was okay, and would probably be good had I played it when it was originally released, but it didn't age all that well, even with the graphics update and voice acting of the DS remake. 9 seemed pretty mediocre - I do need to go back and finish it some day, though, as I didn't get all the way through before being side-tracked by another game. The demo of 12 did not give me good expectations of it, but I haven't gotten to try that yet. And then there's...

Final Fantasy 8: 5. Ugh. This was pretty much unplayable for me. I didn't get far, but even what I did get through was a chore, not a game. On top of the already-bad ATB, it throws the terrible "draw" system for magic, and the "junction" system that relies on the "draw" system. And the characters annoy the crap out of me (except Squall, but given what I've since learned about the game, that's apparently just because he almost never spoke in the parts I played). And given what I've since learned about the game, the story is pretty much nonsense. Essentially, I can completely agree with The Spoony One's review of it (if you don't know what that is but want to, google ThatGuyWiththeGlasses.com or The Spoony Experiment - just be warned he does use strong language, often. And the review is kind of long - 11 parts, often 20 minutes to a half hour in length each - so you may not want to watch all of it, at least not in one sitting).

There is one game I would like to say is the reverse of this thread's intent - a much-hyped game that I didn't play when it came out but feel actually lives up to its hype. That game is Chrono Trigger. Seriously, I just played the DS re-release last year, and it is every bit as good as its fans say. It is so good that the cheesy story does not come off as cheesy when you play it, but rather as interesting and engaging. It is, in fact, so good that it made me forget how much I dislike the ATB combat system, which is a huge accomplishment. This is the first and so far only game that I can say, having gone into it only after hearing the praise it gets on the 'net, is actually worthy of that praise.

And just to be safe, I'll end on another reminder that the preceding has been all merely my own subjective opinion.

Zevox

[Athaniar]

Hardly. Majora was good, but way too short for its own good (only 4 dungeons? Really?), and the story was pretty lame (the main villain was an emo skull kid, for pete's sake). Good concept, not so great execution. Whereas Ocarina took a basic, already well-worn concept and churned out fantastic execution.

Did you miss the part about him being possessed by the evil mask, you know, the one the game is named for?

[Winthur]

From my understanding, the battery makes the zealots give you a bigger bang for your buck, as long as you keep recharging them the second their shields go down. Plus it is another piece of structure to block off zerglings.

Except you're basing on a rather implausible scenario. First, this is Blood Bath, a map with VERY short distances between the spawning points. On most maps, when your Probe reaches the base (if he does), he will only get in time to see the Zerglings coming out of your base. You are not going to get the Battery in time, and building it just because you SUSPECT a rush is counter-intuitive - there's no use for that battery past the rush stage, and if the rush doesn't come, you lose time.


Still, you need to back the Zealot away after 1-2 strikes to make the most of it and avoid the zealot from being overwhelmed using the probes to block off and swarm the lings. And yadda, yadda, yadda...

You're making it sound like the scenario is this:

Protoss: "Oh my GOD! Those Zerglings are coming my way! Gotta get my Probes off the Probe line! Quickly, get that Zealot! FASTER! Move it all faster! CRAP, I've misclicked! GODDAMN LATENCY! AAAAARGH! ... ... ... gg.
Zerg: "LAWL I just press A click on the ground and win kekekeke ^_^ gg no re"

The problem is, when the Protoss knows well enough how to defend against the rush (which still isn't as extreme as you're describing), the Zerg needs to use extreme micro just as well. Why, you ask? Because if he just lets them go on their own, the Probes simply massacre the Zerglings. That's because the StarCraft AI for units makes them attack the strongest units (Zealot with 16 attack as opposed to 5 attack Probes). Therefore, the Zerglings will try to get to the Zealot, but they will just run all over the place with Probes taking free hits at them. So the Zerg has to steer his Zerglings manually, otherwise they die pointlessly. That's why both sides need to work their fingers off in order to succeed. And Zerg is under pressure - he gambled the whole game on that one 4 pool rush, and if it fails, the game is basically over for him. He NEEDS to kill the Zealot and the Probes, or maybe immobilize the Gateway by destroying it's Pylon, or whatever. When the second Zealot pops out from the gateway, the Zerg is screwed, unless he killed the first one with no losses - and how likely is that? As you can see in the example that you yourself posted, the Zerg needed a lot of control over his Zerglings to try and succeed.


And about patching, gaming media that offer reviews (like the giants of the sort of GameSpot and the like) only ever analyses the game at launch, and give you the impression at that, and that makes or breaks the games nowdays (I've seem quite a few that sank just because they were imbalanced at launch, no matter they fixed most of it in their very first patch). To appraise SC in different terms is fair how?

Then take any magazine from that era and see the reviews for StarCraft. They were all positive, weren't they? If they weren't, Blizzard's creation would be considered a failure and nobody would bother to keep improving it, right? But StarCraft was a success, and that's why patches and expansion pack followed. That means the imbalances didn't hamper the game all that much back then, and it was pretty enjoyable despite the need of patching. And it's a GOOD thing that "games sink because they come out to the market flawed and not playtested". It's a great deterrent for game companies with funny ideas like "Rush the game to the stores now and later release a huge-as-hell 200 MB patch that will cover all the inaccuracies that we didn't manage to fix."


(I played the game back them, people just exited the game if you went with Zerg and zerg simply won everybody, the games could only be balanced if played with the same factions, which was boring, saying the game was the best then is ignoring how much nitpicky and issues there was to play multiplayer back then).

When I was a noob and played WC2, I would often opt for games like "1v1 no rush" or "no attack until 15 minutes". It was popular, as I reckon, in SC, as well! That kind of hampers the idea of Zerg eating you immediately, right? So you can have a more enjoyable game and neglect the thing that makes it unenjoyable. And since it is now fixed to the point of not being a game breaker, I don't see any problem. Besides from what I heard, the balance between races was rather... well, balanced, but those little imbalance issues switched heavily. Compare Grrr... who played Zerg, then after a patch Montaro (Terran) was on the top of the heap. But those were little imbalances and usually people played various races. And Blizzard kept patching the issue until it went extent. So in terms of multiplayer experience, Blizzard's creation was on top of the heap since its very beginning (along with C&C) and 'til now (where it shares the podium with DoW and WC3).

Also, take your time and use proper grammar with your posts - the sentence I quoted here is kinda hard to understand.

[Zevox]

Did you miss the part about him being possessed by the evil mask, you know, the one in the game is named for?
No, I just didn't find that to be an interesting plot device, considering it was attached to the emo skull kid.

Zevox

[Oslecamo]

No, I just didn't find that to be an interesting plot device, considering it was attached to the emo skull kid.


However, you've got to admit that altough there are only 4 dungeons, each of those dungeons easily counts as 2 normal zelda dungeons.

Heck, the last one is pretty big, and then you've gotta do it again upside-down!

Plus every temple had a smaller dungeon before it wich was quite good on it's own right, like the pirate base, and the catacombs.

And then you had plenty of side quests to compensate for the emo main villain, from true drama to comedy. I'm still spooked by arriving at a farm where there's only one crying woman and something seems to be missing, so I've got to return in day 1 and discover they're being invaded by alien-ghosts, unless I save the night in a pitched batle, in wich case it turns into a quest to protect a mik caravan.

Or put the tormented dead finaly to rest, or joining the cursed separated couple, or just helping grandmans being assaulted on the street. Those details really count a lot. MM had a lot more work on the lesser NPCs than OoT.

[Zevox]

However, you've got to admit that altough there are only 4 dungeons, each of those dungeons easily counts as 2 normal zelda dungeons.
The latter two, sure. The former two... not so much. Particularly the swamp one, which was rather mediocre for a Zelda temple. The ice one was good though.


Plus every temple had a smaller dungeon before it wich was quite good on it's own right, like the pirate base, and the catacombs.
The only one I was impressed by was the castle in the desert. The pirate base was only okay. The others were rather dull and don't really count even as mini-dungeons (the ice one especially, which was nothing but a run around the mountain).


And then you had plenty of side quests to compensate for the emo main villain, from true drama to comedy.
Yeah, and those were mostly good, but in my opinion that's a failing, when you need to rely on side-quests to make up for the lack of (or lacking) main quest.

Hence why I say Majora was good, but not as good as Ocarina. I'd put it as the least of the 3D Zeldas, personally. Which isn't bad, as all of the 3D Zeldas are very good. Majora just isn't as good as the rest, IMO.

Zevox

[ZeroNumerous]

Final Fantasy Tactics: 2. Certainly better than its "advanced" counterpart, but it had its own problems, particularly when it comes to the poor translation. Definitely not the epic example of the tactical RPG genre some fans make it out to be.

If the poor translation is the only problem then I'd suggest playing PSP remake: The Lion War. FFT isn't played for the battle system because there are much better tactical RPGs out there(Front Mission!). It's played for the story.

[Zevox]

If the poor translation is the only problem then I'd suggest playing PSP remake: The Lion War. FFT isn't played for the battle system because there are much better tactical RPGs out there(Front Mission!). It's played for the story.
I might consider that, but I don't have a PSP, and one game is nowhere near enough to justify purchasing one (and besides, I just got a 360, so I don't think I'll be buying anything like that again for a while).

Though the poor translation is not the only problem, just the only one I decided to go into in that post. Another, for instance, is how the side-quests work, with you sending characters out to do them, waiting via moving around the map (often getting into random battles while you're at it, which can get very annoying), then returning to get their report of whether they were successful or not. Overall a pretty bad way to do side-quests, in my opinion, and a feature I was disappointed to see it shared with its "advanced" counterpart.

Zevox

[ZeroNumerous]

Overall a pretty bad way to do side-quests, in my opinion, and a feature I was disappointed to see it shared with its "advanced" counterpart.

I disagree. It gave the units you didn't use(since battle is limited solely to 5 soldiers + NPCs) a chance to be useful without using the weak ones in battle(remember, you get 8 units from the game by the time you're able to do side-quests and that means you have 5 fighters + 3 side-questers). Overall, I feel that the side-quest implementation dealt with my biggest complaint about tactical RPGs: Uselessness of units. Naturally that was immediately negated by lots of useless 'unique' units like Malak, Rafa and Meliadoul.

[Zevox]

I disagree. It gave the units you didn't use(since battle is limited solely to 5 soldiers + NPCs) a chance to be useful without using the weak ones in battle(remember, you get 8 units from the game by the time you're able to do side-quests and that means you have 5 fighters + 3 side-questers). Overall, I feel that the side-quest implementation dealt with my biggest complaint about tactical RPGs: Uselessness of units. Naturally that was immediately negated by lots of useless 'unique' units like Malak, Rafa and Meliadoul.
See, I don't have such a complaint about tactical RPGs. From where I'm sitting, having an excess of units means you have a variety of options to choose from, not that you have useless units. Meanwhile, side-quests where you do nothing but lose the option to use a unit for a time come across as a very boring, bad idea both in theory and implementation for me.

Zevox

[Jamin]

Again, just in your imagination. Comparing diferent genres of gaming is like comparing apples to oranges. Warcraft III tried to combine RTS and RPG and it ended up nasty.

Warcraft 3 is a great game.

[Oslecamo]

Warcraft 3 is a great game.

Yes, but the whole hero+army system still bugs a lot of people and is the main source of inbalance.

I don't fear zerg rushes. I fear blademaster rushes.

[EleventhHour]

Hi, Starcraft fans? Not meaning to be rude or anything, but I think you're off discussing things not even vaguely related to Overration anymore, and would probably benefit from your own thread? StarcraftitP. You could probably make a series out of it.

[warty goblin]

I think the tragedy of WCIII is, from what I played of it, that it sought to combine the wrong parts of RTS and RPG. Rather than muck around with heroes so much- which can have some unpleasant effects on the RTS basis of the game, it seems to me to be a stronger design to take the dialog and branching gameplay of an RPG, but use a reasonably conventional RTS format for the battles. Oh to do it right, you'd need a few consessions to the RPG, such as persistant units and so on- to really capture the feel of fantasy battles making units be actual military units instead of individuals with hero standard bearer/leaders acting as NPC party members- but the fighty bits would, I think, be stronger as a 'pure' RTS.

As for the game I consider most overrated, that's easy. Call of Duty, all of 'em. It's a great game so long as what I want to do matches exactly with what the designers want me to do. The problem is that most of the time I'd rather do things differently, thank you very much. As Crysis (and particularly Warhead) proved, it's quite possible to have a polished thrill ride of man shooting without locking me on rails the entire time. Also, any game that relies on respawning enemies is overrated, period.

[Mystic Muse]

Halo.-4 I liked it at first but it's just so repetitive now. And not in a good way.
Oblivion.-3 There are a lot of problems with this game and I'd rather play Morrowind.
Fable 2-5. IT BURNS US!!!!!
Blink 182-5.:smalltongue:
super mario sunshine.-5

[d12]

For me I liked Morrowind quite a bit. Mostly on how much deeper the character customization and evolution worked out. The enchantment mechanics in Morrowind were mind-boggling deep. Its so much stuff that made the sequel feel terribly dumbed down in these aspects. The greatest problem is how they took the horses away, but at least you could still fast-travel with in these giant fleas and boats, so going from city to city wasn't that bad. The bad part was the game pretty much forcing you to be mage to an extent. Teleport spells and the convenience that is the Mages Guild's portals made it senseless to not be in the Mages Guild. For real transport you also had much more options than Oblivion, where you could only use a horse... you had a Jump Spell, that with a simple 1 second duration and max power was enough to cut traveling time considerably; levitation, that made trekking through mountains less of a hassle (and was actually required to get around in your Mage Tower); Feather was much more important as the lightness of your character determined how fast he ran and how far he jumped; and some enhancement spells. But again, that reinforced the fact that the game forced you to be a mage to an extent...

I almost never use horses in Oblivion. If I need to go somewhere I'll just walk or fast travel. All horses seem to do is make you dismount when you run into enemies (well, or outrun them, but I don't play to run away from combat). I never really got to the point in Morrowind where you can start breaking things with magic and alchemy. Just couldn't stand to put up with the gameplay long enough to get there. I'm not much of a modder, so I don't really know if there are any for fixing combat and letting mana regenerate or the like. Those were the two major problems I had. Well, aside from not being sure whether I can roam around without running into death mobs.

[waterpenguin43]

1: SPORE: It sounded really fun at first, and was for a bit, but then it just got boring, even with GA.

2: SSBB: Don't get me wrong, it's a good game. But it wasn't all that everybody cracked it up to be.

[Dienekes]

2: SSBB: Don't get me wrong, it's a good game. But it wasn't all that everybody cracked it up to be.

I am torn. On one hand something about the gameplay on SSBM I just like better (or it could be that Ganondorf, my favorite character, could kick arse from here to next Wednesday)

On the other, whenever me or my friends want to have some fun playing games we reach for SSBB.

As for Spore, was it really overrated or overhyped? Either way, I got bored of it rather quick

[Lord of Rapture]

Yes. Yes it was. Really.

[Dienekes]

Yes. Yes it was. Really.

Fair enough, I only commented because I heard a lot of people hyping it up before it came out but once it was actually out I heard nothing after like a week later, which seemed to indicate to me that it really wasn't as well liked as the hype and therefore not overrated since it was agreeably average

[Enlong]

2: SSBB: Don't get me wrong, it's a good game. But it wasn't all that everybody cracked it up to be.

I love the game, but I agree. Though frankly, there was so much hype for that game that there was no way it could live up to expectations.

[Lord of Rapture]

Fair enough, I only commented because I heard a lot of people hyping it up before it came out but once it was actually out I heard nothing after like a week later, which seemed to indicate to me that it really wasn't as well liked as the hype and therefore not overrated since it was agreeably average

Ah.

Then in that case, yeah.

[oyhr]

Yes. Yes it was. Really.

The microbial stage was really fun, though. They should have just made a game around that. For the other stages, it just feels like a lesser version of an actual game.

Creature- EVO: Search for Eden
Tribal- Populous
Civilization- Civilization
Space- Strange Adventures in Infinite Space

[Yora]

I'm actually wondering why people say WoW is overrated. Of course, not because it's super-crazy-awesome, (though I do enjoy playing it immensely) but because all I ever hear is people going on and on (and on and on and on) about how much they hate the game. The only people that seem to like it are the ones that play it, and often not even then. It's like a cult classic, except the cult is made up of a few million people instead of a few hundred. :smallconfused:
No, you get the approval of other people if you say that WoW is bad. Same with Halo.

[AgentPaper]

Same with Halo.

Not if you're in a college dorm. :smallwink: (This from personal experience)

[Oslecamo]

Fair enough, I only commented because I heard a lot of people hyping it up before it came out but once it was actually out I heard nothing after like a week later, which seemed to indicate to me that it really wasn't as well liked as the hype and therefore not overrated since it was agreeably average

The hype was mainly about the great and indeed funny creature creator system they released before hand.


People tought "Wow, if this is just the decorator, just imagine how the gameplay will be! This is, they wouldn't spend 99% of their budget just on the decoration would they?"

They did. All of the stages except the first are games painfully simple compared to everything out there that ever came out. People dreamed of creating their own varied armies of creatures and buildings and vehicles and space ships with special powers in massive batles, and then we got...that.

And you cannot even pit your personal armies against your friends!

AgentPaper: Screw Halo, in my uni residence we play DOTA! Heck, we wouldn't even have space for a Xbox anyway.

[AgentPaper]

AgentPaper: Screw Halo, in my uni residence we play DOTA! Heck, we wouldn't even have space for a Xbox anyway.

Speaking of which, I would rate DotA at a 5. :smallwink: (It probably deserves more along the lines of a 3 or 4, but I don't like the style of game so...:smalltongue:)

[Oslecamo]

Speaking of which, I would rate DotA at a 5. :smallwink: (It probably deserves more along the lines of a 3 or 4, but I don't like the style of game so...:smalltongue:)

Maybe, but at least DOTA doesn't demand me to buy another crashing brick.

[toasty]

Speaking of which, I would rate DotA at a 5. :smallwink: (It probably deserves more along the lines of a 3 or 4, but I don't like the style of game so...:smalltongue:)

HOW DARE YOU MOCK DOTA! DOTA IS DA BEST GAME EVAH!!!!!11ONE! /sarcasm

Actually, I'd probably agree with you. DotA has the most horrible learning curve I have ever experienced. Also, when you play AP or SD (the two most common modes I've played) it is just plain unbalanced. The group I play with (which, on good days manages to get 10 people, on bad 3v3) can easily be balanced in player skills, but often it comes down to who has the best heroes...

I suppose CM might fix this a bit, but my friends refuse to play CM because "it takes too long" and "we wouldn't know how to play it anyways" but I think its because, deep down inside, none of them want to play "seriously" and are just there to have fun. I must be the exception. :smallfrown: Though I do take everything really seriously.

[Yora]

Not if you're in a college dorm. :smallwink: (This from personal experience)
There are no true gamers in a college dorm. :smallbiggrin:

[Burley]

There are no true gamers in a college dorm. :smallbiggrin:

Urg... College Dorm Story: I visited a friend who lived in a Co-Ed, substance-free dorm. Long-story shortened: After singing campfire songs in the hallway with a ill-tuned guitar, one of them jumped up and shouted (I kid you not): "Hey, Gang. Let's all play Guitar Hero!" The entire group cheered and bounded down the hall. Imagine a dozen late-teens doing that Brady Bunch jog-thing. ~shiver~

Bringing it all around: Guitar Hero/Rock Band- 3. Fun games, to be sure. But, not as much hype as is deserved.
Also, Resident Evil-4. I'm gonna be honest and say I've only played the first and the most recent. I'm just gonna leave it at: Bad controls makes the action game into a why-can't-I-ever-do-actions game.

Finally: FFVII - 5. I've played the game. The whole game. Seriously, it blew. Hideously. Even for it's time, the graphics weren't great. I don't care who says what, the story is not that great, either. Crisis Core is practically required reading for FFVII to be complete.
Now, most of the FF games I'd rate at about a 6 or 7. Fun, but not much more than average. But, FFVII was less fun than FFVI and less fun than any FF that came after. (With the exception of FFX, because blitzball can die.) It just isn't as good as everybody says it is. I understand that it may have been your first RPG, but seriously, that doesn't mean you should stay with it through high-school and try to keep a long distance relationship during college, even though you're playing better games and just saying you won't get too attached. You're only stopping yourself from finding a better game.

Like Kingdom Hearts. :smalltongue:

This is all my opinion, and I take any opinion as equal to my own. Just... slightly less equal.

[Knaight]

The famous ones:
Kingdom Hearts-4 I'm not particularly fond of Disney, particularly since they have become a pale imitation of Pixar recently, but then they put in a stupid story and ruin what little is left. The combat system isn't bad, and it could be worse, but it doesn't deserve the hype.

Dwarf Fortress-3 It is a good game, but not incredible.

Mount and Blade-4 Again, a good game, a very good game. It's not all its cracked up to be, largely because that is completely impossible.

The less famous ones:
Lugaru-2 Lugaru is a very good game, but it is limited, and has its flaws, and certainly doesn't deserve its reputation. Odds are the same thing is going to happen to Overgrowth.

Dominions 2-3 Dominions 3 is better, and some of the people who stayed can't take a moderate perspective. They are both good games though.

[SandroTheMaster]

You're making it sound like the scenario is this:

Protoss: "Oh my GOD! Those Zerglings are coming my way! Gotta get my Probes off the Probe line! Quickly, get that Zealot! FASTER! Move it all faster! CRAP, I've misclicked! GODDAMN LATENCY! AAAAARGH! ... ... ... gg.
Zerg: "LAWL I just press A click on the ground and win kekekeke ^_^ gg no re"

The problem is, when the Protoss knows well enough how to defend against the rush (which still isn't as extreme as you're describing), the Zerg needs to use extreme micro just as well. Why, you ask? Because if he just lets them go on their own, the Probes simply massacre the Zerglings. That's because the StarCraft AI for units makes them attack the strongest units (Zealot with 16 attack as opposed to 5 attack Probes). Therefore, the Zerglings will try to get to the Zealot, but they will just run all over the place with Probes taking free hits at them. So the Zerg has to steer his Zerglings manually, otherwise they die pointlessly. That's why both sides need to work their fingers off in order to succeed. And Zerg is under pressure - he gambled the whole game on that one 4 pool rush, and if it fails, the game is basically over for him. He NEEDS to kill the Zealot and the Probes, or maybe immobilize the Gateway by destroying it's Pylon, or whatever. When the second Zealot pops out from the gateway, the Zerg is screwed, unless he killed the first one with no losses - and how likely is that? As you can see in the example that you yourself posted, the Zerg needed a lot of control over his Zerglings to try and succeed.

Huh... my point was precisely that BOTH sides need the extreme precision I talked about. "The first one to flinch" means what to you? "The first one only referring to the protoss player"? In these games the Zerg player lost because he screwed over his attack and micro. And if the protoss player spent half a second too long to take his zealot away from the lings he'd have lost as well. It is all that oh-so-important micro that gets me about SC and that bugs me about it being a RTS. SC (and WC3) are the RTSs which need more micro than any other there, and it claims to be the truest, best and ultimate RTS out there. An RTS is about STRATEGY, not REFLEXES. A bit of micro should help, but should also be a small part of the gameplay that you do when you have nothing better to give your attention to, not define who wins and loses in a strategy game. That is what makes me think it is an overrated RTS.

And still, in larger maps by the time the zerglings get to your base you it should be about as much time you need to build the battery. Not to mention that Bloodbath is about the most popular map of SC, akin to CS's de_dust.


Then take any magazine from that era and see the reviews for StarCraft. They were all positive, weren't they? If they weren't, Blizzard's creation would be considered a failure and nobody would bother to keep improving it, right? But StarCraft was a success, and that's why patches and expansion pack followed. That means the imbalances didn't hamper the game all that much back then, and it was pretty enjoyable despite the need of patching. And it's a GOOD thing that "games sink because they come out to the market flawed and not playtested". It's a great deterrent for game companies with funny ideas like "Rush the game to the stores now and later release a huge-as-hell 200 MB patch that will cover all the inaccuracies that we didn't manage to fix."

When I was a noob and played WC2, I would often opt for games like "1v1 no rush" or "no attack until 15 minutes". It was popular, as I reckon, in SC, as well! That kind of hampers the idea of Zerg eating you immediately, right? So you can have a more enjoyable game and neglect the thing that makes it unenjoyable. And since it is now fixed to the point of not being a game breaker, I don't see any problem. Besides from what I heard, the balance between races was rather... well, balanced, but those little imbalance issues switched heavily. Compare Grrr... who played Zerg, then after a patch Montaro (Terran) was on the top of the heap. But those were little imbalances and usually people played various races. And Blizzard kept patching the issue until it went extent. So in terms of multiplayer experience, Blizzard's creation was on top of the heap since its very beginning (along with C&C) and 'til now (where it shares the podium with DoW and WC3).

Also, take your time and use proper grammar with your posts - the sentence I quoted here is kinda hard to understand.

But SC WAS flawed at launch for multiplayer. There was just no counter to Zerg rushes, at all, and Protoss took so long to get into the game it wasn't considered a challenge, that in NORMAL games. All that was overlooked just because it had a good campaign to hold it together initially. A game that commits the sin of allowing that kind of imbalance at launch today doesn't survive. And the "no rushes" are neat and all, but there was still a lot of griefers who liked to enter those games and give a lesson to the "carebears". 1 out of 3 games I tried at the time was ruined like this. Not to mention playing like this is still ignoring the game's set rules for a different kind of gameplay.

[toasty]

There are no true gamers in a college dorm. :smallbiggrin:

I think I disagree. I know one person who is in a college dorm right now and is what I'd call a "true gamer".

Unless you are somehow making a joke I've missed and I'm taking you too seriously.

[SandroTheMaster]

I think I disagree. I know one person who is in a college dorm right now and is what I'd call a "true gamer".

Unless you are somehow making a joke I've missed and I'm taking you too seriously.

I believe he's talking about the kind of "gamers" in college dorms usually being some jocks who've discovered Halo and teabagging and now think they're gamers.

[Oslecamo]

Actually, I'd probably agree with you. DotA has the most horrible learning curve I have ever experienced. Also, when you play AP or SD (the two most common modes I've played) it is just plain unbalanced. The group I play with (which, on good days manages to get 10 people, on bad 3v3) can easily be balanced in player skills, but often it comes down to who has the best heroes...

You complain about that? Our group usualy plays -AR, and just lets the madness roll in!

Just yesterday we had this epic 3x3 game, where the other team, even after all repicking, are left with only melee strenght heroes, while we get the normaly more balanced strenght+agi+int.

What do you know, the three strenght heroes proceed to rape us most of the game since we lower our guard, and when we notice they're pushing into our last defense line.

We counter, try to push back, and get wiped. And they, instead of finishing our base, go after Roshan! We respawn, make a new strategy, and proceed to win a game wich seemed completely stacked against us (they had three times our kills and all at higher levels than us)!

So, yes, sometimes you just say "screw balance" and go along with it.:smallbiggrin:

[toasty]

Believe me when I say we try sometimes... but it can be hard. And yes, we do play AR sometimes but I HATE AR.

We do generally attempt to screw balance and just get on with it if given no other option, but it doesn't work. I do remember when somehow (I forget... exactly) we played a 4v4 against an all Intel team and we lost because they built the "stunner" intel build (everyone had Guinsoo or some disable) it was an interesting game...

[deuxhero]

KotOR I is a 4 or 5 on the scale. Jolee Bindo (HK-47 is one joke) is just about the only interesting thing in the game between the bad combat and bad story.

Brawl is a 5, takes everything melee did right and removes it.

[valadil]

Halo. I tried going through single player and gave up after the first level. It was just boring. I've played a lot of FPSes and this is one of the only ones I've given up on.

What Halo did right is multiplayer. It was a LAN party in a box. One xbox and one TV is all you need for four players to have a good time. More players just require a router and some cat5 cable. For a lot of people Halo was the first multiplayer FPS experience. At the time I still prefered counter strike, but Halo was a lot more accessible for non gamers.

[Lord Seth]

Hey, hey, I never said it was a timeless game. Timeless doesn't mean a game is good, and neither does a game being good make it timeless. Tetris for example is timeless in it's simplicity, but isn't really that amazing a game in the first place, at least to me.

Also, don't make me into a straw-man and put words into my mouth. I never said that you're evil for not liking the game, just that calling it "over-hyped" because it's not as good as current games isn't really fair.To completely derail this thread, I feel I should point out that "it's" with an apostrophe shouldn't be used for possession, only as a contraction of "it is" or "it has." The correct spelling is "its" with no apostrophe when using it for possession.

EDIT: Just to stay on topic, I'll say Sonic Unleashed. The prevailing view seemed to be "okay, the night levels suck, but the day levels were great." I found the day levels to be mediocre at best and the night levels even worse. The day levels weren't bad, but they weren't good either and I found them boring, and certainly not worthy of all the praise I kept hearing.

[Eldariel]

WoW - Can't see why anyone would play this PoS for more than 5 mins; it's like sitting on an internet forum and playing Diablo.
Diablo/Diablo II - Speaking of Diablo, what the heck is up with these games? Many still herald them as the second coming and yet all you do is click a button and collect ****. What's the point?
Halo - I like Half-Life. It had an interesting story and a goodly bunch of monsters and a reasonable player role and so on; it was an interesting world and an interesting FPS. Halo felt like Doom, which was fine when Doom was published, but eh... Haven't played Halo 2 and 3 though (well, obviously), so can't say if it applies there.
Pokemon - Now honestly, what the hell is the deal with these? It's the best-selling gaming franchise in the history, and yet it's what essentially boils down to a storyless JRPG where you don't even get to EQUIP your characters. The hell?
DoTA - Ok so, it's not a game but it's frankly treated as one. So...you control one unit, kill a bunch of mooks, level-up and repeat while trying to kill opponent's heroes and then go on the offense. It has about the 1000th of the point of any real RTS with just one aspect of control in existence and relies on just grinding the same lines over and over again until you kill opponent enough to go for the win and...just what the heck?

[ZeroNumerous]

Pokemon - Now honestly, what the hell is the deal with these? It's the best-selling gaming franchise in the history, and yet it's what essentially boils down to a storyless JRPG where you don't even get to EQUIP your characters. The hell?

Held Items = Equipment
Used Items = Used Items
Moves = Spells
Types = Rock-paper-scissors.

It's simple, easily picked up and easily put down. What more do you want from a handheld franchise?

[Eldariel]

Held Items = Equipment
Used Items = Used Items
Moves = Spells
Types = Rock-paper-scissors.

It's simple, easily picked up and easily put down. What more do you want from a handheld franchise?

I'm not saying there's no reason for it to exist, I'm just wondering how the heck it's sold trillion times more than any other franchise (other than apparently all the Mario-games counted together) ever in the history of gaming.

[Zevox]

Pokemon - Now honestly, what the hell is the deal with these? It's the best-selling gaming franchise in the history, and yet it's what essentially boils down to a storyless JRPG where you don't even get to EQUIP your characters. The hell?
Actually, I'm pretty sure the best-selling gaming franchise in history is Mario. Until recently (with Wii Sports), Super Mario Brothers was the best-selling individual game in history, and the total number of Mario games out there far exceeds the total number of Pokèmon games. Or games of any other single franchise, actually.

But the main attraction of Pokèmon is simply the easy-to-learn gameplay combined with the ability to capture and raise a huge variety of monsters for combat. It's really just that basic.

Zevox

[Winthur]

Huh... my point was precisely that BOTH sides need the extreme precision I talked about. "The first one to flinch" means what to you? "The first one only referring to the protoss player"? In these games the Zerg player lost because he screwed over his attack and micro. And if the protoss player spent half a second too long to take his zealot away from the lings he'd have lost as well. It is all that oh-so-important micro that gets me about SC and that bugs me about it being a RTS. SC (and WC3) are the RTSs which need more micro than any other there, and it claims to be the truest, best and ultimate RTS out there. An RTS is about STRATEGY, not REFLEXES. A bit of micro should help, but should also be a small part of the gameplay that you do when you have nothing better to give your attention to, not define who wins and loses in a strategy game. That is what makes me think it is an overrated RTS.
First things first - you claimed that the Zerg were unbalanced and the game imperfect just because Zerg rush owned all. I replied with the fact that a Zerg needs a lot of skill to pull off the rush successfully against an opponent who knows how to counter it. Zerg is under much bigger pressure than his opponent - if the opponent defends against the rush, Zerg is screwed, so the Zerg needs to do a lot more damage to make his build advantageous.

Then, let me remind you: I'm merely a D player, which means someone who is either a total newbie or someone with a basic understanding about the game but none of the skills. But yet I could take a Protoss (which is NOT a race I play most) and possibly defend against a 6 zergling rush of a similarly skilled player without having to kill my fingers.

Similarly, on the level of a total noob, all you really need to do is make sure that Zealot and Probe are properly coordinated so that they work with each other; most of the Zerg players have problem with controlling fragile Zerglings. It is not that microintensive.

And on a progame, the 5 pool rush will have to be executed masterfully and the reacting player's Zealot/Probe micro also will have to be masterful.
Here's the big problem with your understanding.

Objectively, you have a bad misunderstanding of how the whole thing works.

The fact that SC is competitive in terms of micro and macro actually HELPS it. There's a big difference between executing a 2 hatch hydra rush with lousy micro or bad timing and a masterfully controlled army by a StarCraft virtuoso. If you've been kidnapped by someone, held at gunpoint and asked: "Go 2 hatch hydra rush" while never familiarizing yourself with the idea, you would probably lose a ton of units and the enemy would need a lot less units to defend. So, without proper control and fast game sense, the response is set in stone: Your hydras just go in and die because you didn't capitalize on their strengths, making them easy to kill.

On the other hand, early Hydralisks in the hands of a master can win the game for you very early on in certain cases. If you want to make a Hydra rush your primary weapon, you study how to do it and learn consistently, until you can use it perfectly. The benefits will be enormous when in a crucial game where your opponent goes for a Fast Expand economic strat that has only a few units, you just smile and get those Hydras that you're a master of.

Likewise, I usually play 3 Hatch Mutalisk, because that's what I got used to and that's what usually works against my opponents. That doesn't mean I'm unflexible; but if I get to play 3 Hatch Muta because of what my opponent allows me to, I smile and move on with the game, because that's the best thing I'm in during that stage of the game. Yakkul (Pepe_Quicose) from our group will probably look for holes in your defense and send a few Reaver drops to get rid of your economy - just because it's his ultimate weapon of destruction that allows him to win using the resulting advantage. Et cetera.

So if you really want to be able to crush your opponents with a 5 pool, just WORK ON IT. Practice your Zergling micro often. And it will pay off, even if only as a wild card you can use against an unsuspecting opponent - your rushes will work.

This is a big difference between a lively game and a nice thing for a year that later goes on a shelf and never again gets back. It's not a kind of game for everyone, but so what? It was already shown that you can play this game in various ways, even with a bunch of tomfooling newbie friends, and it will work just as well for you. If you don't want to play competitively and worship Kerrigan every time you go to bed (...Okay, I'm the only person I know who does that...), then leave people who do alone! Plain and simple. I'm not the kind of guy to enter a BGH game and scream: "NOOBS LEARN HOW TO PLAY THIS GAME".

Furthermore, StarCraft is NOT a clickfest primarily. The fact that you need to build up skills actually helps strategizing! Because you don't have to keep reminding yourself to build things when you're experienced. An expert player does things by heart, instinctively; he has more free time to think strategically and tactically. While a newbie player, fixated mentally on controlling units, will have his strategy suffer.

Yes, StarCraft needs agility and fast fingers. You can be a master strategist and lose to someone just because he was faster and better. But if you're both fast and good, it's strategy that will matter. And even in our group, consisted mostly of nubcakes who climb up the D-ladder, this has proven true on many situations.

StarCraft is often said to be all monkey arms and not brains. But that's not only flawed thinking; the way StarCraft and WarCraft are constructed clearly shows why are they so popular and why so many people want to get good at them.


And still, in larger maps by the time the zerglings get to your base you it should be about as much time you need to build the battery. Not to mention that Bloodbath is about the most popular map of SC, akin to CS's de_dust.

WHY? You don't need to, and you don't need to kill your fingers without a Shield Battery. If you want, I can go now, molest Winterwind through PM and make a reppack where I go 4 pool everytime and the Protoss responds normally. A Shield Battery is redundant.


But SC WAS flawed at launch for multiplayer. There was just no counter to Zerg rushes, at all, and Protoss took so long to get into the game it wasn't considered a challenge, that in NORMAL games. All that was overlooked just because it had a good campaign to hold it together initially. A game that commits the sin of allowing that kind of imbalance at launch today doesn't survive.

Look at Diablo 2. It's still heavily unbalanced after patches, allowing many cookie cutter strategies, and it's still easily one of the best games of its kind on the market.

Sure, flawed games don't survive to finer days... except back then times were different. Back then, people only knew a few things about this game and learned about it. An "awesome strategy" would change every few days. Zerg rushes were undefeatable only after Blizzard found out that yeah, it really IS overpowered on such a scale, with 150 minerals for a pool. And I remind you: you CAN play "no rush" games if you're a newbie, and it WAS a popular idea in the release, making most of the complaints pretty negligible with just an addition of a variant.

And, in fact, if you look at it this way, StarCraft was maybe the first game to introduce the concept of unique races, each of them playable and each of them capable of beating the other. Most of the time it was just some red vs blue fights, or like in WarCraft 2 - differing only in a few details. In Dune 2, there were some different units, but the differences were pretty marginal, like between Raider Trikes. StarCraft pretty much changed it and now everyone tries to have special units for every faction. For a first game of it's kind to allow this, I think the reason why do we now have StarCraft Brood War that's still being updated and StarCraft 2 upcoming is for the sole reason: because players back then appreciated the game for it's multiplayer value and accepted its flaws. Blizzard responded by fixing the game and making it that much more better. That's why in Korea it became so wildly popular. Now, think about it: if SC such a failure that nobody would play MP because of what are you saying, would Blizzard bother with patching the game? I can only imagine Bill Roper screaming in the Hyde Park: "NOW YOU CAN PLAY STARCRAFT! It's now patched and we fixed all those things that annoyed you!"


And the "no rushes" are neat and all, but there was still a lot of griefers who liked to enter those games and give a lesson to the "carebears". 1 out of 3 games I tried at the time was ruined like this. Not to mention playing like this is still ignoring the game's set rules for a different kind of gameplay.

No it isn't. Ignoring the set rules would be if I turned on a trainer and added myself a ton of resources, gas, and 20 gateways at start. You're not breaking any rules if you agree just to simply not attack each other. It's just an agreement between two players. It's like chess: you can play tourney-style with the rule that you have to play a piece after you touch it... but if you're just playing with a casual player looking for fun, then why bother?

Sure, griefers were there. So what? Just leave the game, make another and wait for a normal soul. After all, the StarCraft future wasn't destroyed by those griefers, so there probably were a ton of normal players.

[Lord Seth]

Mario is the best-selling video game franchise of all time. Pokemon is #2, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game_franchises). (the sources for the numbers are cited)

I'm surprised that Zelda is only #10.

[SandroTheMaster]

And since when I said Starcraft is a bad game? All I'm saying is it is overrated, especially as a RTS, precisely because Starcraft players deem Starcraft to be the ultimate RTS, when the game is clearly more geared towards agility than strategy. I never said strategy doesn't play part in the game, either. But if you're not microing while playing SC you're not going to win, plain and simple.

And I don't say that because I'm bad at micro or because I suck at SC or either because I hate it. As the thread name says, it is overrated games, and SC, as an RTS than anything else, is extremely overrated from my point of view, and I said again and again why I think it is overrated, point the kind of gameplay that points how the game is geared towards reflexes vs strategy, remember the people that say SC was always the perfectly balanced asymmetrical RTS that, as any RTS, it wasn't at launch, and you keep picking my tactics and defending the game as if I've said its the most horrible game of all time! If I thought so, I wouldn't know that much about it. It is just that I think that Starcraft, AS A RTS, is the worst possible example for everyone to compare RTSs in general against, because its become the benchamark for RTSs and I completely disagree.

And most of all, every single Starcraft fan keeps shoveling the "Its a national sport in South Korea" as a proof of the awesome gaming God that is Starcraft, when that doesn't really say much about the game at all, it just means these people arbitrarily picked a game and rolled with it to define an era of electronic sports, in the same way the US picked Baseball and Football (which are pretty obscure in most of the world) or Canada likes Curling (which... I really can't say anything about). Then you forget that this is only in South Korea, and that in the rest of the world electronic sports usually boils down to Counter-Strike and a handful of Racing Games, with Starcraft far behind in the line.

Finally I prefer to accumulate a bit of resources early on (and that is pretty much in ANY Strategy game, not only SC) while I'm scouting, and just decide what I'll do after I've seem what my enemy is going for. In the case of Starcraft, if I see he is rushing, then I have the crystals to, say, start building some zealots and a battery to keep them going, if not, I can concentrate my resources in climbing the tech-tree early on. And that is a common strategy. You can't make the gateway pump more zealots at once no matter what, so a battery is the best support structure you can use your resources on, since another gateway would be more resources than your probes will probably be able to keep up with. And it works fine for me, but I still don't like to be forced to micromanage that much when I'm playing an RTS once the lings get to my base.

[Oslecamo]

DoTA - Ok so, it's not a game but it's frankly treated as one. So...you control one unit, kill a bunch of mooks, level-up and repeat while trying to kill opponent's heroes and then go on the offense. It has about the 1000th of the point of any real RTS with just one aspect of control in existence and relies on just grinding the same lines over and over again until you kill opponent enough to go for the win and...just what the heck?

This just shows that you fully didn't grasp the game. It's more complex than that. Knowing when and wich lines to push will mean the diference ebtween glorious victory and humiliating defeat.

Killing enemy heros help, but it won't win you the game by itself. I've won a lot of games where my team was behind in kills, money and experience, because, like in a game of chess, we sacrificed our resources and lifes in order to position our mooks in such a way that we would destroy the enemy base. Cleaning one lane is easy. But where is your god when all three sides of your base are under heavy assault and you can only be in one place at the same time? Good dota players must know how to control the lanes to their advantage.

And heck, by your standards, FPSs and dueling titles also aren't games!

Sandrothemaster:Just so you know, footbal is extremely popular in Europe. And China. And football players are the best paid sport players in history. Wich says a lot about how popular football really is in the sports world. And I will say no more because it's more than clear than you're completely biased and nothing we could say would even budge your mind about this matter.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Half-life 2 is one of the most over-rated games of all time.
OF ALL TIME.
The (Linear) pathway is convultuted and confusing, with no clear indication of which direction to ambe in, not even a handy "Things to shoot are this way", as the game wildly flucuates between "Calm, measured, slow-paced battles" and "Long, fatigue-inducing and twisty hallways with minimal illumination" very sparsely broken up with ham-fisted expoisition on events I can't be made to give a toss about because none of the characters are in any way endearing.
Which is kinda a shame, because the opening of the game set up a beautiully distopic atmosphere and then gives us no time to hate Big Brother or sympathise with the poor, poor Proles, prefering to shoot at us right away.

And then theres the long, convulted half-vehicle sections with the laggy, unresponsive controls on both the driving and the mouted gun turret fronts.

THEN theres no reward or application of skill. If I plug a white-gas-mask'd mook through the throat or skull, I expect immediate icapacitation or death, not return fire. The lack of fine-aim or aiming down the sights, or whatever you want to call it for most weapons is downright infuriating.
(I have this same problem with HALO).
Also, for the sake of All that is Good and Holy, let me KICK things!
I'm not asking for an extremly overpowered melee winbutton (A-la HALO or Call of Duty), or a gruesome, fun weapon to beat things with or even a rile but. I just want Gordon to friggin kick a dude in order to stun him long enough to either A) Run away or B) Pull the trigger more.
At least, for the Goddess's sake, the crouch button is a toggle.
(Yeah, I'm looking at you again, HALO, with your crappy "Hold left stick to crouch and fatigue the crap out of your movement thumb")

[Drakyn]

Why don't we just rename the thread more accurately as "I don't like this game and someone else liked it"?

[Artanis]

*things about StarCraft*

The thing is, you're talking about really high-level play. Of course you're going to get whipped if you play at a level higher than your own. Where StarCraft succeeds is that unlike many other games, if both players are the same level, it still works regardless of what that level is. If both players are really good in the skillset that StarCraft uses, the game is balanced, competitive, and fun. If both players are really bad, then the game is still balanced, competitive, and fun. And if both players are mediocre, well, you get the point.

Sandrothemaster:Just so you know, footbal is extremely popular in Europe. And China. And football players are the best paid sport players in history. Wich says a lot about how popular football really is in the sports world. And I will say no more because it's more than clear than you're completely biased and nothing we could say would even budge your mind about this matter.

By this I assume you mean what Americans call Soccer, and not American Football, correct?

[Winthur]

And since when I said Starcraft is a bad game? All I'm saying is it is overrated, especially as a RTS, precisely because Starcraft players deem Starcraft to be the ultimate RTS, when the game is clearly more geared towards agility than strategy. I never said strategy doesn't play part in the game, either. But if you're not microing while playing SC you're not going to win, plain and simple.

If you're bad at shooting while playing FPS, you are not going to win, plain and simple. If you're bad at jumping, figuring out how to fight a boss and shooting while playing Contra, you're not going to win, plain and simple.

That truly means those games suck.


And I don't say that because I'm bad at micro or because I suck at SC or either because I hate it. As the thread name says, it is overrated games, and SC, as an RTS than anything else, is extremely overrated from my point of view, and I said again and again why I think it is overrated, point the kind of gameplay that points how the game is geared towards reflexes vs strategy, remember the people that say SC was always the perfectly balanced asymmetrical RTS that, as any RTS, it wasn't at launch, and you keep picking my tactics and defending the game as if I've said its the most horrible game of all time!

But what have you been saying has been objectively, not subjectively, wrong. I understand that for someone playing 1v1 on battle.net is too hard and not his kind of fun, but please, at least don't support it on the claims like "Zerg rush is so unfair, and you totally need a Battery to defend against it.". I could understand that for someone's subjective reasons StarCraft just isn't his game. But since the beginning of this debate I'm focused on the way some of your arguments are objectively misguided.


And most of all, every single Starcraft fan keeps shoveling the "Its a national sport in South Korea" as a proof of the awesome gaming God that is Starcraft, when that doesn't really say much about the game at all, it just means these people arbitrarily picked a game and rolled with it to define an era of electronic sports, in the same way the US picked Baseball and Football (which are pretty obscure in most of the world) or Canada likes Curling (which... I really can't say anything about).

But nobody here repeats "StarCraft is good because South Koreans worship it" all the time. And Koreans weren't as hyped up in this game at its beginning, when it was people like Zileas, Grrr... or Montaro who played it more than Koreans. There are many good reasons why StarCraft is good, and I never waged my argument upon the popularity of the game amongst Koreans.


Then you forget that this is only in South Korea, and that in the rest of the world electronic sports usually boils down to Counter-Strike and a handful of Racing Games, with Starcraft far behind in the line.

Wrong again. StarCraft has progamers in countries like Poland, Russia and Ukraine, too. From all over the world! StarCraft community is huge, and it doesn't boil down to just Koreans. In fact, StarCraft has been in WCG since the very beginning, and a ton of players from different countries flocked there to play it. One Russian, Androide, almost managed to steal the Korean trophy.


Finally I prefer to accumulate a bit of resources early on (and that is pretty much in ANY Strategy game, not only SC) while I'm scouting, and just decide what I'll do after I've seem what my enemy is going for. In the case of Starcraft, if I see he is rushing, then I have the crystals to, say, start building some zealots and a battery to keep them going, if not, I can concentrate my resources in climbing the tech-tree early on. And that is a common strategy.

Wait, in every game it is common to respond to a rush with building fast units yourself, and continue on with it when; that's what strategy is in this case, responding to your opponent's threats. You can't expect to win against a ton of War Elephants by building Libraries when you're playing Civilization IV, and you can't win with Zerglings by building a Nexus in your second expansions.


You can't make the gateway pump more zealots at once no matter what, so a battery is the best support structure you can use your resources on, since another gateway would be more resources than your probes will probably be able to keep up with. And it works fine for me, but I still don't like to be forced to micromanage that much when I'm playing an RTS once the lings get to my base.

Do I have to repeat the same sentence over and over to you? I will elaborate even more: when I was a 100% newbie who wanted to treat this game a little more seriously, and played Protoss, and had virtually no skill with it, I once found advice on the internet about fightning 4 pool rushes, found a training custom scenario, and after 2 games I was able to win with just Probes and a Zealot. With no Battery. Sure, it was against a computer, but when I learned how to defend against rushes like this, usually the Zerg had to be REALLY godly at Zergling micro to win with their Zerg rush approach, and I was playing mostly "noob only" games because it just suited me more at the time. Your idea for defense against Zerg rush is simply bad, and realistically, nobody goes such an approach because it's just counterintuitive.

Oh, and you know what? I know a guy who back in the days won every game against me. He had only 80 APM. I have 220 APM, and I still suck. You know why? Because he made every click of his count, and he was a strategic player who was capable of coordinating a lot of operations simultaneously. Dexterity in StarCraft does matter, but equally so matters thinking, especially since you have to stay on your toes.

In fact, on the grounds you're speaking of, you can compare StarCraft to chess - a bit. If you try to play against a master, he will have a great advantage simply because he played this game so extensively he will do his moves a lot quicker, knowing a lot more responses and openings. That's not really because of some strategy thinking power, it's just because he knows what's the optimal move. In StarCraft, it's similar - you need to build up your mechanics, but strategy is just as important. Superfast clicking isn't needed unless you're trying to become a really high-ranked player.

But yes, I understand that StarCraft is also a rather hardcore game and in order to play it well enough you need to devote your time to learning it. That's why it might not suit most people.

So let's just end on it like this. :smallsmile:

EDIT:

Where StarCraft succeeds is that unlike many other games, if both players are the same level, it still works regardless of what that level is. If both players are really good in the skillset that StarCraft uses, the game is balanced, competitive, and fun.

...You know, if I reduced my posts to this, I could save myself some time while giving the initial idea.

Anyway, thanks for making me want to be able to write more clearly and to the point. :smallbiggrin:

[chiasaur11]

Half-life 2 is one of the most over-rated games of all time.
OF ALL TIME.
The (Linear) pathway is convultuted and confusing, with no clear indication of which direction to ambe in, not even a handy "Things to shoot are this way", as the game wildly flucuates between "Calm, measured, slow-paced battles" and "Long, fatigue-inducing and twisty hallways with minimal illumination" very sparsely broken up with ham-fisted expoisition on events I can't be made to give a toss about because none of the characters are in any way endearing.
Which is kinda a shame, because the opening of the game set up a beautiully distopic atmosphere and then gives us no time to hate Big Brother or sympathise with the poor, poor Proles, prefering to shoot at us right away.

And then theres the long, convulted half-vehicle sections with the laggy, unresponsive controls on both the driving and the mouted gun turret fronts.

THEN theres no reward or application of skill. If I plug a white-gas-mask'd mook through the throat or skull, I expect immediate icapacitation or death, not return fire. The lack of fine-aim or aiming down the sights, or whatever you want to call it for most weapons is downright infuriating.
(I have this same problem with HALO).
Also, for the sake of All that is Good and Holy, let me KICK things!
I'm not asking for an extremly overpowered melee winbutton (A-la HALO or Call of Duty), or a gruesome, fun weapon to beat things with or even a rile but. I just want Gordon to friggin kick a dude in order to stun him long enough to either A) Run away or B) Pull the trigger more.
At least, for the Goddess's sake, the crouch button is a toggle.
(Yeah, I'm looking at you again, HALO, with your crappy "Hold left stick to crouch and fatigue the crap out of your movement thumb")

I know that words are appearing on the screen, and I can recognize them individually, but in their current form the tounge they speak is incomprehensible to me.

[Erloas]

I think this greatly states why some of us see Starcraft as overrated. The fact that you can't say anything negative about the game, or even that the game is good but overrated without people coming to its defense saying that it is in fact that amazing and that it can't possible be overrated because it is simply so great there is no way it could possible be overrated.

[Thanatos 51-50]

I know that words are appearing on the screen, and I can recognize them individually, but in their current form the tounge they speak is incomprehensible to me.

There are three reasons I put down the controller for any given FPS with a campagin mode, they are, in order of frequency:
"OhcrapohcrapohcrapIhavetoGotoworkinsuxminuetes".
"Wow, the particular section is exceedingly difficult and there is no way I can slog past it without putting the control down for a bit and letting myself calm down and become Zen Master."
"Oh, look. I beat it"

Half-Life 2 is the only FPS I've played where I put the controller down because I idily wondered if Hulu had updated House, yet, and considered being dissapointed that they hadn't and then mindlessly farting about the internet to be a more enjoyable time-waster.

[Madmal]

You should all play Killer7, hopefully some of your heads will explode while trying to fully understand the plot.

And then i'll take care of culling the weak ones that survived.

Yes, i find that game to be Underrated

[Thanatos 51-50]

You should all play Killer7, hopefully some of your heads will explode while trying to fully understand the plot.

And then i'll take care of culling the weak ones that survived.

Yes, i find that game to be Underrated

This is a game I continually find myself regretting not getting my paws on.
That game, and Psychonauts.

[chiasaur11]

This is a game I continually find myself regretting not getting my paws on.
That game, and Psychonauts.

Got a computer?

Psychonauts is on Steam for a tenner.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Got a computer?

Psychonauts is on Steam for a tenner.

Theres just something wrong about playing a platformer on a PC. I need a gamepad. Seriously.
The funny bit: My computer recognises that it's run on an American IP. My Xbox doesn't. This means I can neither download The Guild, nor Psychonauts.
I have tried on many occasions.

[chiasaur11]

Theres just something wrong about playing a platformer on a PC. I need a gamepad. Seriously.
The funny bit: My computer recognises that it's run on an American IP. My Xbox doesn't. This means I can neither download The Guild, nor Psychonauts.
I have tried on many occasions.

Well, the PC version might work with a 360 gamepad. Worth a look-see.

[Thane of Fife]

And football players are the best paid sport players in history.

I don't think that that's true. See Forbes (http://digg.com/other_sports/The_World_s_20_Highest_Paid_Athletes). Golf players, Basketball Players, and Racecar Drivers appear to be the most highly paid sport players in history.

This website (http://us-open-golf-betting.com/highest-paid-sports.html) is perhaps less authoritative, but still puts Football/Soccer players fairly low on the list compared to Boxers and Formula 1 drivers.

[Shas aia Toriia]

Anybody else think this thread should be locked? Seems like an excuse for people to flame one another.

[Warpfire]

Portal blows. Seriously.

Also, Super Smash Brothers. All of them.

Hmm...can't think of any other extremely popular games I dislike. I mean, I guess there's a couple mildly popular games I don't like, but go big or go home, right?

[Lord of Rapture]

Warpfire and Thanatos, you are hereby excommunicated from the Church of Nerddom for insulting Valve games. Have a nice day.

[ZeroNumerous]

Mario is the best-selling video game franchise of all time. Pokemon is #2, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_video_game_franchises). (the sources for the numbers are cited)

I'm surprised that Zelda is only #10.

It's not alot of difference though: 210 million copies to 193 million copies. Either way, I can't see how Pokemon is overrated since it's not lauded as the greatest thing since slice bread. It's a functional RPG with lots of choices that you can pick up, fiddle with for ten minutes then go back to doing whatever you were doing.


You should all play Killer7, hopefully some of your heads will explode while trying to fully understand the plot.

It's not a terribly convoluted plot. People just like to make it that way: A deific assassin uses a man as transportation to fight an ancient enemy. He gives said man superhuman capabilities when said ancient enemy does the same to his cult of followers. Everything else is just fine details. :smallwink:

[Warpfire]

I love the smell of burning sacred cows in the morning.

Did mean what I said, though.

Hey, someone's going to have to stop kissing Valve's ass if everyone else is going to fit back there.

[ZeroNumerous]

Portal blows. Seriously.

I have to agree. Portal, while a fun romp with mechanics we were unfamiliar with, was a not worth a full-game. It was a minigame, and that's why it was bundled in the Orange Box. I'd like a full game from Valve utilizing either the Portal basis or Portal engine, but I'm not holding my breath for anything.

[chiasaur11]

I love the smell of burning sacred cows in the morning.

Did mean what I said, though.

Hey, someone's going to have to stop kissing Valve's ass if everyone else is going to fit back there.

Well, your loss.

I thought they were kidding when they said Valve's poop didn't stink. Emphasis on the past tense.

[Lord of Rapture]

Did any of you not realize it was sarcasm?

[Phase]

I thought they were kidding when they said Valve's poop didn't stink. Emphasis on the past tense.

Lavender and steak-ems. That's what I smell.

Mmmm. Valve.

[Rockphed]

I rank Gal Civ II about a 3 on the scale at the beginning of the thread. Why? Simply because it tries to do Space Empires, only 10 years later, with shinier graphics, not as fun logistics, and "Super AI." Personally, I think that Space Empires III was a better game, and III was not even the peak of the series.

[Warpfire]

Did any of you not realize it was sarcasm?

While I do hold firm in my convictions, I was being a bit facetious myself.

[Thanatos 51-50]

Warpfire and Thanatos, you are hereby excommunicated from the Church of Nerddom for insulting Valve games. Have a nice day.

Oh, that's fine, I'm not a member.
Also, you lack the authority to excommunicate anyone. I've seen your file.
*spooooooooky noises go here*

[Lord of Rapture]

Like I said, sarcasm.

[Lord of Syntax]

for me, all of the g****n Halo travesties games and its deformed mutant offspring are at HypeCon 5

[Jahkaivah]

I have to agree. Portal, while a fun romp with mechanics we were unfamiliar with, was a not worth a full-game. It was a minigame, and that's why it was bundled in the Orange Box. I'd like a full game from Valve utilizing either the Portal basis or Portal engine, but I'm not holding my breath for anything.

It wouldn't work. Unless Valve gave it more game mechanics in there alongside portals.

Portal was just the right length to work (maybe ideally it needed to be even shorter), enough to wow you with it's mechanic and humour and atmosphere, and then leave before you started to see the stains.

Case in point: The community maps didn't manage to do much more with the forumla than Valve did, atleast, not without comming up with Puzzles which weren't really portal-related or making the game stupididly hard.


Half-Life 2 is the only FPS I've played where I put the controller down because I idily wondered if Hulu had updated House, yet, and considered being dissapointed that they hadn't and then mindlessly farting about the internet to be a more enjoyable time-waster.

I don't think Valve intended the game to be played with new-fangled Keyboards and Mice which have to be lifted up to be used.

[Weimann]

I'll throw in Scribblenauts at a 3 or 4 here. Sure it's kind of fun to see just how many words actually give you something, but that's about it. The problem-solving is uninteresting, there is no overarching storyline, and the fact that there are 200 kinds of birds doesn't stop EVERY SINGLE BIRD from behaving just like what you'd get if you typed "bird".

Some people said it'd be the game of the century. I sincerely hope it won't make game of the year.

[Optimystik]

Seconding the FF series, particularly every game after 7.

Valve and Blizzard own my heart.

[Ilena]

In all honesty, most new games i find to be crap, not worth the money to buy them, at least for pc, and not worth the money to buy for xbox (most not even worth the time to rent), i dont know why but it feels most games are all pushing graphics at expense of story and story is what makes me want to play, though there are games that are just pure fun for example EDF, its fun playing two player, single player would be boring but two player coop makes it fun, another thing is alot of games are going online coop and not coop on one machine or hell even system link, coop on one machine is what makes it fun, its as simple as that, if you have that the game has far higher points to me, single player games, ill rent it and play it once but no way am i going to buy it, but any games that i feel are overhyped,


Halo 2 for sure, rated probably 3 or 4, its not really that good of a game at all.

Im trying to wrack my brain for a few others i know are there, but i cant right now, so halo 2 can stand alone for now,

[Artanis]

Valve and Blizzard own my heart.

Did you know that the cheat code "Operation CWAL" was named after a group of people who wrote stories on the forums prior to StarCraft's release, and that said group was even mentioned in the credits portion of the game manual?

Did you know that there was a new version/homage called Operation CWALA that came together for WC3?

Yeah, guess why I'm mentioning this :smallcool:

[Yora]

I wonder how many people who rate Halo as 5 have actually played any of the games.
Sure, they are terribly overrated, but I'd place them at at least a 3, probably even a 2. They are not worse than any other shoter you can get your hands on.

[warty goblin]

I wonder how many people who rate Halo as 5 have actually played any of the games.
Sure, they are terribly overrated, but I'd place them at at least a 3, probably even a 2. They are not worse than any other shoter you can get your hands on.

There are still parts of Halo: CE I play with reasonable regularity. On Legendary it's a nice challenge, on Easy it's hilarious- nothing can hurt me.

[onasuma]

Oh, I also have to add that Portal is VERY overrated.

I agree with almost everything in this thread. While I see tf2, half life's and L4D as golden plated and holy, I admit they arent all that on their own - its the community around them that makes them such dear relics to me - I cant be doing with this. Portal is pretty much the best game Ive ever played. It might be a bit overated, but its pretty damn hard to find any fault with portal and it was amusing beyond pretty much any modern games. Its following, I feel is roughly appropriet to how good it - Not much higher or much lower. That game was awesome.

[Knaight]

I'll throw in Scribblenauts at a 3 or 4 here. Sure it's kind of fun to see just how many words actually give you something, but that's about it. The problem-solving is uninteresting, there is no overarching storyline, and the fact that there are 200 kinds of birds doesn't stop EVERY SINGLE BIRD from behaving just like what you'd get if you typed "bird".

Some people said it'd be the game of the century. I sincerely hope it won't make game of the year.

I am so with you here. Sure, how much work they put into it and all the detail is nice, and how complete it is is really nice, but honestly? You want a big open free game play a tabletop RPG, and they will manage the game section well too, not just the big open.

On Portal: It was OK, and very interesting, but a bit longer than it needed to be, plus I would have liked it better if it were turn based. It was better than all the block pushing games or others with one whole mechanic, but if you look at other complex stuff like DROD, its really not all that hugely impressive. You do have to like Glados though.

[SandroTheMaster]

Yeah... I give up arguing about Starcraft. My gripe is about its merits as an RTS, responding to several people at the same time, and every SC fan out there respond as if the whole post was directed to themselves particularly. Also they avoid the strategy aspect and the absolute necessity of micro of my argument to just to keep saying that my protoss strategy sucks and that SC is the only RTS played around the world. Alright, I abide. SC is awesome. You win. I'm tired of having every single of my sentences being throughly examined by Winthur.

Sincerely, I've received far less flak than I seriously expected for my list. I was fully awaiting to try to protect myself against the chorus of dozens of MGS fans frantically explaining why I'm stupid for not understanding the masterful work that is the MGS plot.

And I'll have to look upon this alien idea that Football is popular in Europe. But even if you meant Soccer, Soccer was chosen just as arbitrarily as SC was in Korea. Why in the US Baseball and Football are popular? Why is Soccer popular in Europe and South America? Why is Hockey and Curling popular in Canada? For thousands of reasons, but none of them, neither the sum of them, is even close to a rational toughtful choice. Its not like the people of Canada one day got together and said: "Now, we'll vote if Hockey is to be our National Sport. Everyone who approves says aye." It is not because Football is particularly better than soccer, it is just a subjective choice that has nothing to do with the particular merits of the sport (except for Curling and Hockey, the need of ice may have tipped it to flourish in the cold, lifeless land that is Canada).

On the new topics: Sccribblenauts seemed like a neat idea. But for precisely the same reasons Spore seemed like a neat idea. I've seem that a mile away. But it isn't overrated, it is overhyped.

As for Half-Life 2, I too expected to live in the dystopian City 17, but outside the over-reliance on the physics gimmick I don't see nothing that wrong with the game. Its not like the mechanics were already outdated when the game was out (it'd take a few years after that for all these FPS mechanics to really settle).

As for Portal, it didn't feel too long for me. But it sure could have more going on for it other than GLaDOS.

[Lord of Rapture]

Buddy, if you take the plot of MGS seriously, you need to take a good, long, hard look at your life. :smallcool:

The plot is only serious on the surface; digging deeper reveals that Hideo Kojima is in fact, trolling anyone who takes the games seriously.

[factotum]

Also they avoid the strategy aspect and the absolute necessity of micro of my argument to just to keep saying that my protoss strategy sucks and that SC is the only RTS played around the world.


Out of curiosity, what do you believe is a better RTS than Starcraft? I'm not a big fan of the entire genre, as it happens, because I think it forces you to make decisions too quickly; TBS all the way, but I enjoyed Starcraft when I played it and I can see why many people consider it the pinnacle of the genre it's a part of.

[GreatLordParry]

Yeah... I give up arguing about Starcraft. My gripe is about its merits as an RTS, responding to several people at the same time, and every SC fan out there respond as if the whole post was directed to themselves particularly. Also they avoid the strategy aspect and the absolute necessity of micro of my argument to just to keep saying that my protoss strategy sucks and that SC is the only RTS played around the world. Alright, I abide. SC is awesome. You win. I'm tired of having every single of my sentences being throughly examined by Winthur.


Lol SC being the only RTS played around the world.

Go talk ot people who play RA3. It's being played in China, the UK, all over the world.

Now, protoss in general is pretty much group ctrl-1, a click. (which means put them in a group of twelve, and go attack move some where), however if you got a toss strategy, I wouldn't mind playing against you with it.

I won't lie. I suck at Starcraft, but strategy's strategy until you mass carriers and mutas.


And you're right. Microing IS a mandatory part of starcraft. Whoever says it isn't deserves a boot up their ass and a whole re-evaluation at how they play.




Speaking of overrated, here's one for you: Borderlands.

[Oslecamo]

Also they avoid the strategy aspect and the absolute necessity of micro of my argument to just to keep saying that my protoss strategy sucks and that SC is the only RTS played around the world. Alright, I abide. SC is awesome. You win. I'm tired of having every single of my sentences being throughly examined by Winthur.


So, out of curiosity, what do you call "strategy"? Isn't raiding the enemy workers instead of randomly attacking buildings strategy? Isn't taking a siege tank to higher ground and then using other troops to atract your enemy to the area strategy? Or puting mines in a place you expect your enemy to pass soon enough? Deciding between expanding and rushing? Should I mass mutas or go for hydralisks? Should I attack the enemy's main or one of the expos?

What do you call strategy, I wonder? Perhaps you meant "shiny graphics"? Sync-kills?

Because I've already defeated oponents with better micro than me, due to the simple fact I was a better strategy and could make up for my lesser micro by building the right counters at the right time. His rush was stoped by mines on the way, his invisible wraith raid was stoped by my missile turrets on the right spot again, and when he proceeded to mass battleships I took the oportunity to expand and mass goliaths. I took horribly losses fighting his heavily microed units, but my better strategy gave me the resource advantage wich won me the day in the end.

[toasty]

Because I've already defeated oponents with better micro than me, due to the simple fact I was a better strategy and could make up for my lesser micro by building the right counters at the right time. His rush was stoped by mines on the way, his invisible wraith raid was stoped by my missile turrets on the right spot again, and when he proceeded to mass carriers I took the oportunity to expand and mass goliaths. I took horribly losses fighting his heavily microed units, but my better strategy gave me the resource advantage wich won me the day in the end.

He had both wraiths and carriers?:smallconfused:

Your point is still valid, btw, just wondering there...

[Winthur]

Yeah... I give up arguing about Starcraft. My gripe is about its merits as an RTS, responding to several people at the same time, and every SC fan out there respond as if the whole post was directed to themselves particularly. Also they avoid the strategy aspect and the absolute necessity of micro of my argument to just to keep saying that my protoss strategy sucks and that SC is the only RTS played around the world. Alright, I abide. SC is awesome. You win. I'm tired of having every single of my sentences being throughly examined by Winthur.

If you have actually read my posts instead of immediately assuming: "This StarCraft nerd Winthur is now going to prove how much of a noob I am that I can't defend against rushes", you would have seen that I've nothing against people who don't like StarCraft and I can understand that opinion, that I've tried mainly to defend my opinion of StarCraft requiring as much strategy as it does agility, and that your ideas about "imbalances" in this game are objectively wrong. (No offense, but what you wrote was like saying that in Quake 3 the Gauntlet is overpowered because it kills in two hits.) You win. I'm tired of having to elaborate on the simplest matters because you won't bother to understand my point.


Now, protoss in general is pretty much group ctrl-1, a click. (which means put them in a group of twelve, and go attack move some where), however if you got a toss strategy, I wouldn't mind playing against you with it.

That's more of a meme than a serious idea. Yeah, the Protoss are the easiest race for beginners, but reality isn't that sweet. :smallwink:



And you're right. Microing IS a mandatory part of starcraft. Whoever says it isn't deserves a boot up their ass and a whole re-evaluation at how they play.
Nobody said that microing isn't an important attribute of a StarCraft player. On the other hand, you can't measure a player's skill just because he's good at micro.


I won't lie. I suck at Starcraft, but strategy's strategy until you mass carriers and mutas.

Those units also require strategy, given how squishy you are if you get them at the wrong time or lose them for no reason. :smallwink:

/EOT/

[Oslecamo]

He had both wraiths and carriers?:smallconfused:

Your point is still valid, btw, just wondering there...

I meant battleships, the late game terran unit.

And, like Withur pointed out, if you can't counter mass carriers/battleships then either you had already lost or you're still a beginer. Goliaths and scourges will tear them apart quite easily, as long as you remember to tell them to attack the big flying unit instead of the tiny drones. Considering how big and slow carriers are, one doesn't really need to be a micro genius to pull it out.

Carriers only really shine as a finisher move when you've already crippled badly your enemy and he cannot afford counters fast enough.

[GreatLordParry]

Not entirely true, now Mutalisks, if massed, are difficult as hell to counter if you've not seen them during the whole game (thus it would require almost no strategy to get like, 9 groups of mutas which is relatively easy mid to late game)



And in theory, Winthur, There are -some- imbalances, but not enough to throw the whole metagame off.

And about the counter-point for scourge/goliath comment

My original statement (group a-click) means that, if you're using carriers, and scourge try to kill the carriers, most of them will most likely not get to the target (even with microing, unless you throw units infront of those carriers in the first place) to begin with.

The same -could- be said for Mutas, but I doubt it as A) they're far easier to kill (120 hp) and B) they're very rarely used for early game rush.

[Artanis]

Pre-post disclaimer: I was not exactly what you would call skilled at all an elite player*, so this is what goes "on paper". In practice it is, like many things, easier said than done. Now, with that said...


Mass carriers/battlecruisers is the strategy that is the most incredibly vulnerable to the counter-tactic of not letting them do it in the first place. Carriers and Battlecruisers are so expensive and so high up the tech tree that they're only really going to pull off a mass Carrier/BC strategy if you haven't hit them early, hard, and often enough with some other strategy.

Even if they do get the time and resources to try it, scouting is going to see some sign of the impending doomfleet, giving you time to counter it. As long as the two players are at about the same skill level, the Carrier/BC-masser is going to be vulnerable to an equal-level player building up a counter-force (generally involving AoE air attackers like Corsairs and/or casters) and hammering them with more conventional attacks.



*I was really damn good at MTG though :smallredface:

[Rettu Skcollob]

Just for anyone who's dropping in late in the thread, this is pretty much most of it with a few notable exceptions, summed up.

http://i33.tinypic.com/2sajpuc.png

[Astrella]

Guys, please take this to the Starcraft thread (which I'm sure is still around.).

I'd say Spore, I was really disappointed in the boringness of the actual game. Had expected much more possibilities.

[nooblade]

Aww man, I'm too late to comment on most of the Starcraft shenanigans.


If 9 groups of Mutalisks attack you, then you should've seen it coming by then (and then you're probably playing on a money map, too, which is silly and not like the original game very much in strategy). The fog of war is not your friend. Having this information somewhat ahead of time and responding to it (possibly preventing it or at least hampering it) is an essential part of strategy.

IMHO, Starcraft gets a lot of negative feedback because you have to manage your actions very carefully, to the point of having just about everything (as much as possible, really) figured out before a given game. When quick thinking saves the day, it is very subtle, just a tilt of the balance in your favor. Maybe from something like positioning your units or a bit of extra scouting or some deductive thinking (so you don't need to scout as much). But when a person does put any sufficient amount of effort into learning how to play it, well, the giddiness of Starcraft fanboys is not entirely immature. In other words, it is very rewarding. Not for everyone, but a real gem. Being able to reach 200 supply on a full-sized map and still being able to wrap my mouse pointer around all of it feels great.


I'm not sure if any newer games have captured this at all (there certainly have been attempts at imitation), I haven't played much else, so I can't decide if it's getting too much hype or not enough. But I think it's unique enough that many RTS players can profit (fun, new experience) from learning how to play it competitively. It was certainly worth my time.


Ooh, the Starcraft thread, full of the people who refined my game... Has it been being used? We might need to make a new one.

Edit: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101411&page=29
Here it is! Still in use.

[KitsuneKionchi]

Most doom style FPS are vastly overrated. I consider any FPS "doom style" if it conforms to ALL of the following:

1.) Point and Click interface (point at an enemy and click).
2.) Some guns that grossly out class others.
3.) Guns are found on the ground or picked up from other players.

Now I added 3 because I do enjoy counter-strike a lot. Yes, the game is usually "who can headshot the best" (assuming AWPs are disabled). But it tends to test reflexes far more than most other FPS games I play, which just tests this sort of rock-paper-scissors kind of "out of your hands" stuff like classes, finding guns on the ground and spamming grenades.

Most FPS also lose my interest when I hear there are objectives to unlock powers or even new weapons. Really? You don't have enough confidence in your game that your going to keep parts of it locked out IN MULTIPLAYER?! That's ridiculous. Rewarding a player for doing something amazing shouldn't make it EASIER for them do to amazing things.

Imagine if experience points in DnD was based on the strength of your character and not the party...so the newer players levelled slower and the more experienced character builders could level faster...that'd be pretty silly.

I like games in which all players start out equal from the beginning, save for their own personal skill. I mentioned counter-strike earlier and while it does reward kills with "money" to buy "better guns", nearly every server I've played gives players max money from the beginning. Many also let you get max money by simply typing something like "money!" into the console.

Furthermore, if you just buy a pistol for a round, you should be able to affoard any gun even if you lose.

And it ultimately doesn't matter since the default lowest amount of money you'll ever have (800) is enough for a gun that can one shot anyone at great ranges (deagle). Its not automatic and it has no scope or spray like a sniper or a shotty, but its nice.

[KitsuneKionchi]

Now that I'm done discussing my hatred of FPS, lets move onto fighting games.

I do own a few fighting games and enjoy playing them. Naruto GNT4 for the gamecube (import) is a fun fighter simply because it has lots of crazy powers that are easy to use, has 4 player support and is so ultimately broken (every character can be classified as better or worse than another character) that playing too competitively with a group of friends is a joke. You can still combo, etc... but ultimately you can still (especially in multiplayer) lose to a newer player using random ninja techniques (if they picked a significantly stronger character at least).

But what frustrates me is when someone does go 'competitive'. I've played enough that I've almost reached a pinnacle with my favorite characters. I still couldn't compete in a tournament since those characters are ultimately weak compared to the "only four characters who ever reach the highest bracket, 90% of which are itachi". But ultimately it was to satisfy the test of every fighting game:

PLAYER VERSUS INTERFACE

Players cannot fight other players in video games. Unless a video game is done so that it could be emulated on a tabletop (such as the Xbox port of Settlers of Catan or Diplomacy), the game is fundamentally a competition between two players and their interface. Once you reach a certain level in these games, your opponent's successful actions are ultimately trivial. The only way to win or, in some fighting games, even progress is through a mistake. A missed step in a combo or a slight mis-time or attacking when the opponent's character has an attack that is slightly faster...fighting games (and many others) are ultimately a battle against the console. Whereas when two people fight it should be a battle of preparation (training, technique, style), guts/grit, and even a bit of luck, fighting video games are only a test to see how well you've progressed in mastering that particular game.

Its not a test of wits, skill, charm, smarts or determination. Its a battle of an ultimately unique skill: that particular series, genre or even specific game. There is some reaction time involved, but its so fundamentally based on the timing of the game that its extraordinarily difficult to port that skill to any other legitimate use in the real world.

There is some of this in tabletop gaming. A person whose played magic for 5 years might have an edge over someone who picked it up 4 months ago. But I've seen numerous cases of players who are just more clever than other players and who can quickly surpass them in the hobby as the game relies mostly on skills that can be honned doing more than JUST that game.

Past hobbies are ultimately based on the honing of useful skills. Sports like Basketball promote physical health and coordination. Crafts like woodworking can be used to create useful tools or inspiring art. Even board games like Go and games like Dungeons and Dragons assist in developing a person's problem solving skills. Video games, especially fighting games, tend to take so much of the 'hassle' out of these hobbies that they ultimately become meaningless.

Now you can still tell a great story with a video game. Mind you most story games tend to be roughly 1-2 hours long with 69 hours of grinding and non-story related fighting, scrolling through menus, moving through locations, etc... You can still have fun with your friends playing video games as a social medium. Of course your not interacting directly with your friends so much as the computer itself as you woefully attempt to master the interface of the game. You can relief stress, of course there are other hobbies that can be more easily converted to constructive life skills that take just as much time and often times considerably less money.

Now this isn't just an anti-video game rant. There are quite a few excellent games out there. They are a waste of time, but they allow you to have fun with any amount of time you spend playing. You don'thave to stick to the game for 40+ hours to get to the good parts. Portal, Cstrike, Tetris and Zone of the Enders 2 are great examples of games where you can sit down and play for an hour and be done with it. You've experienced everything the game has to offer.

Ultimately this post, although beginning in the fighting genre, is really more of a complaint of a brand of roleplaying games that I find 'overrated' for the points outlined above. Games like Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft and even my beloved Pokemon take away so much time for so little benefit. Given how long these games take to develop, you think the creators would be able to allow these 'epic games' (i.e. those that take 20-40 hours to complete) to be playable by a casual gaming crowd.

Now I shiver at using that word as it is often used as an insult. "Casual Gamers" is most often used on that both hated and overrated game World of Warcraft to describe those who only play for 2-4 hours a week. I fail to see how that's casual, as the average work time of a part time job is 4-6 hours per week and even a part time worker is considered a 'professional' in that field. But apparently only playing 200 hours of a game per year makes you 'casual' and 'undeserving of the most fun this game has to offer'.

Since when did 'time invested' become 'amount of fun your allowed to have'? Why are the people in a better position to waste their lives the ones rewarded by a more entertaining game (i.e. that 'game' you can only achieve after playing for an inhuman amount of hours)? Why should the brightest and hardest working of our society suffer through unskippable 1-2 hour long tutorials and 30-40 hour rat grinds?

Its sad too: I started playing Dungeons and Dragons online a few weeks ago (although I haven't logged in for a while) and I was blown away at how much better it was than World of Warcraft. Sure, I was dissapointed with the (compared to 3.5 DnD core) low number of races, feats, classes and even weapon types the game had. But considering it lack of a success, I basically consider Eberron Unlimited in the same caetgory as "WoW, 6 months after launch".

But with just the tutorial ("the island") I had a great amount of fun. And I could skip it and still recieve its rewards. With just the simplest quests I could interact with the game and tell it what to do beyond "attack this foe". I was dodging and swerving about the screen...it was wonderous. And this whole "newb island" quest line had such an epic ending (spoilers): An illithid controlling a white dragon?! Insane cool. Compare that with WoW's first major low-level quest for the horde: "Kill this orc. He has a neat sword and is trying to start a cult in Ogrimmar. He has no special minions and he's 1/10th the level of the town guards who could wipe his entire cult out in 2 minutes."

[tribble]

My brother got twilight princess a few weeks ago.
And I HATE it.
I don't hate it because it's OOT gameplay in newer graphics, I hate it because of the graphics engine. everything is so freaking overdetailed and brownwashed that I can't actually walk into a room and immediately assess what's actually relevant. I cannot solve the puzzles because I cannot see them. Graphics are well and good, but there's a point where they can strangle gameplay.

[Theodoric]

GTAIV. It's just meh. The 'realism' went too far; I much prefer Saints Row 2, as that didn't lose the silly aspect. For the PC, that is; the latter's perfectly playable now after huge patches (and if you own a relatively up-to-date pc).

[tribble]

Most doom style FPS are vastly overrated. I consider any FPS "doom style" if it conforms to ALL of the following:

1.) Point and Click interface (point at an enemy and click).
2.) Some guns that grossly out class others.
3.) Guns are found on the ground or picked up from other players.


wait, so you find it poor style for an assault rifle to be more effective than a handgun?:smallconfused:

[The Orange Zergling]

I got the impression that the last time I elaborated on this I helped get the thread locked so I'll just abbreviate this one: Defense of the Ancients. Even though it's technically a mod and not a game.

I thought Halo 1 was good in the first half but the second half went really screwy with terrible level design and really cheap, frustrating encounters, sometimes with allies that hurt you more than helped you. 2 and 3 were vast improvements over this, but considering that what I thought, overall, of the original game in the series seems to be shared by everybody I've talked with about it I'm not sure how it ever got off the ground. :smallconfused:

[Madmal]

It's not a terribly convoluted plot. People just like to make it that way: A deific assassin uses a man as transportation to fight an ancient enemy. He gives said man superhuman capabilities when said ancient enemy does the same to his cult of followers. Everything else is just fine details. :smallwink:

That's why i mentioned "fully" in there. You forgot the "West culture vs. East culture" implications, along with a good share of philosophical and theological stuff that could be taken from there.

You are obviously weak, i'd come for you as soon as i find your adress... and manage to get money for an airplane ticket. :smalltongue:

[Inhuman Bot]

GTAIV. It's just meh. The 'realism' went too far; I much prefer Saints Row 2, as that didn't lose the silly aspect. For the PC, that is; the latter's perfectly playable now after huge patches (and if you own a relatively up-to-date pc).

I've never played GTAIV actually, but yes, I have to agree. SR 2 is ****ing amazing.

However, for overrated, I'd also have to say... Red Faction. The new one, specficially. I haven't heard anyone aside from Yahtzee (But he's prefers focusing on the negative anyways) say anything bad about it, but I find the game to be absolutely atrocious.


That's why i mentioned "fully" in there. You forgot the "West culture vs. East culture" implications, along with a good share of philosophical and theological stuff that could be taken from there.

You are obviously weak, i'd come for you as soon as i find your adress... and manage to get money for an airplane ticket. :smalltongue:

You can read as deeply as you want into Killer7, and it will only get more confusing. You should just agree with ZeroNumerous. :smalltongue:

[ZeroNumerous]

That's why i mentioned "fully" in there. You forgot the "West culture vs. East culture" implications, along with a good share of philosophical and theological stuff that could be taken from there.

Ah, but you forgot the "plot" part that you had prefaced with "fully understand". While there are implications of West vs East, philosophical and theological musings in the game... They have nothing to do with the plot. Any implications or musings are separate from the very simple, very easy to understand plot that people like to muddle up with extra dangly bits. :smalltongue:

[KitsuneKionchi]

wait, so you find it poor style for an assault rifle to be more effective than a handgun?:smallconfused:

Why the confusion? A handgun kills just as well as an assault rifle, except against armor of course.

And I'm fine with that difference in strength. Now when comparing a rocket launcher with a pistol...that gets to be ridiculous. Or assault rifles with scopes (note that 'auto-awps' tend to be banned in counter-strike source games).

[RS14]

Why the confusion? A handgun kills just as well as an assault rifle, except against armor of course.

And I'm fine with that difference in strength. Now when comparing a rocket launcher with a pistol...that gets to be ridiculous. Or assault rifles with scopes (note that 'auto-awps' tend to be banned in counter-strike source games).

In general, no, it doesn't.

Rifles of all sorts fire rounds faster than pistols, and the rounds tend to be heavier for any given caliber. While there is some truth to the notion that shot placement matters more than the caliber and mass of a round, you should consider hunting, and note that most handgun hunting is done with very large caliber handguns, even when a smaller caliber rifle would serve. Thus we conclude that rifles generally kill better than pistols. Go look at some samples of ballistic gel if you need further persuasion.

Furthermore, rifles should be more powerful as a consequence of being more accurate, even without a scope, due to the larger sight radius and greater stability.

[factotum]

I suppose if you're comparing a large calibre handgun against an assault rifle then there might be a point there--assault rifles tend to use very small, light ammunition compared to handgun ammo. A hunting rifle is a very different beast.

[Smight]

GTAIV. It's just meh. The 'realism' went too far; I much prefer Saints Row 2, as that didn't lose the silly aspect. For the PC, that is; the latter's perfectly playable now after huge patches (and if you own a relatively up-to-date pc).

agreed , also main character cant speak a word of his own language, he mangles those few lines he has, so that Jackie Chan sounds like Shakespeare in comparison.

[SandroTheMaster]

And the SC chorus devolve into the tactics riff-raff.

@Oslecamo: His rush took long enough for you to get mines? And he was such a good microer he completely failed to avoid turrets? And then he proceeded to throw all his uber micro away in favor of massing battleships? That doesn't look like good micro to me...

And what I consider a good Strategy game? What about one where when you have a battle going on, and there are stuff you need to give your attention elsewhere, anything, it is more important to put your focus on that "stuff" than micro the battle like it was a complex puzzle. At most, you could consider giving an order to retreat for your units if you figure it isn't going to end well. In starcraft, battles where you overwhelm your opponent can be lost because he just has the micro to tell the right units to attack the right targets in the right numbers on the go. Unless it is something that can't be helped (zealots vs mutalisks), you will always be screwed if you're not giving 99% of your attention to your individual unit battles. It's like a tactical game where the best tactician is the one who can use the mouse faster to tell his units to kill x target. Its a game where you can't just lose yourself in the strategy part if you expect to win. And that has given a bad rep to real-time strategy games forever because of that, because people believe you need to be the uber-microer to be able to play any RTS. Starcraft simply isn't the RTS to be the example every other one should be judged as. But it simply is. And because of that, strategy games who don't follow the SC formula are instantly prejudiced against for being considered slow paced and having nothing to do (as in "nothing to do" being "your micro doesn't make that much difference").

Oh, I forgot one more game to put in the Overrated list:

3. Street Fight 2 - Oh boy. Let me just say, all the overrating of this game boils down to the point of SF4 being nothing more than exactly the SF2 with more characters and in 3D. (Though I liked 3 very much).

[Johnny Blade]

You know, parts of this Starcraft talk make me want to dust my copy off.
But parts of it also make me think that it is, in fact, overrated in certain circles and, well, nations, especially what nooblade wrote about the importance of a predetermined strategy.


Also, I'll have to agree with the people that said Morrowind is overrated. Now, I had a lot of fun with it a few years ago, but when I played it again recently it was downright painful at times. The speed of the character, the running around trying to find that ****ing mine/cave/camp/dude in the vast grey-brown open ranges, the click-till-it-keels-over combat, the inventory etc.
It's still a lot of fun, it just didn't age all that well, as far as gameplay is concerned.

[Oslecamo]

@Oslecamo: His rush took long enough for you to get mines?

Since he tried to rush me with vultures, yes, I had enough time to get mines of my own



And he was such a good microer he completely failed to avoid turrets?

You cannot avoid turrets when they fully circle the oponent's base. I took the gamble of circling my base with them, and it paid off.



And then he proceeded to throw all his uber micro away in favor of massing battleships? That doesn't look like good micro to me...

His micro was good. His strategy and macro were bad, and thus he lost. It takes a lot of micro to select a dozen battleshisps and make them fire their yamato cannons at a dozen diferent targets in just a few seconds.



And what I consider a good Strategy game? What about one where when you have a battle going on, and there are stuff you need to give your attention elsewhere, anything, it is more important to put your focus on that "stuff" than micro the battle like it was a complex puzzle.

The match I talked about worked that way. I see his battleships tearing a hole trough my missile defenses. I send in my goliaths, and go to produce more goliaths and expanding my expos and sending more goliath waves. His slow battleships get overrun despite taking down a good bunch of the goliaths with them. Eventualy I have to tell my goliaths to retreat when I reach his base and discover he had some siege tanks in waiting.



At most, you could consider giving an order to retreat for your units if you figure it isn't going to end well. In starcraft, battles where you overwhelm your opponent can be lost because he just has the micro to tell the right units to attack the right targets in the right numbers on the go. Unless it is something that can't be helped (zealots vs mutalisks), you will always be screwed if you're not giving 99% of your attention to your individual unit battles. It's like a tactical game where the best tactician is the one who can use the mouse faster to tell his units to kill x target. Its a game where you can't just lose yourself in the strategy part if you expect to win. And that has given a bad rep to real-time strategy games forever because of that, because people believe you need to be the uber-microer to be able to play any RTS. Starcraft simply isn't the RTS to be the example every other one should be judged as. But it simply is. And because of that, strategy games who don't follow the SC formula are instantly prejudiced against for being considered slow paced and having nothing to do (as in "nothing to do" being "your micro doesn't make that much difference").

Again, please point me to an RTS that doesn't recuire micro. Age of empires demanded it. Total anihilation demanded it. That's why it's called REAL TIME strategy.

Also, handling out orders fast enough it's an indsipensable part of any great tactician. A lot of wars were lost because the comanders hesitated in a crucial moment, and let the enemy outmaneuver them, geting caught in all kind of traps wich they could've avoided if they had just ordered their troops to do X at the right moment.

Really, your argument is as valid as saying that chess sucks because you've got to always pay atention to the board and have a good memory to plan a dozen plays in advance.

[Folytopo]

I think the main point Sandro is trying to make, is that the actual strategy of Starcraft has a large interface barrier. Meaning it is harder to select units, manage your economy, gather information, use abilities than it should be. Much of Starcraft is learning the interface. Many Starcraft games when I played had a set build order and it was only execution that mattered. There was very little evaluation or mind games because there was always an optimal solution. Every game has execution barriers, some more than others.

[warty goblin]

Again, please point me to an RTS that doesn't recuire micro. Age of empires demanded it. Total anihilation demanded it. That's why it's called REAL TIME strategy.

I play Sins of a Solar Empire with very, very little micro, although that's only singleplayer. I've also heard from people who play the game multiplayer that controlling individual ships is generally a suboptimal way to spend your time, and that games are generally won or lost through better economic management, map control and placement of fleets.


Also, handling out orders fast enough it's an indsipensable part of any great tactician. A lot of wars were lost because the comanders hesitated in a crucial moment, and let the enemy outmaneuver them, geting caught in all kind of traps wich they could've avoided if they had just ordered their troops to do X at the right moment.
Tactics are distinct from strategy. It's also worth pointing out that the sort of mistakes that lose wars tend not to be telling a particular tank to attack a particular dude at a particular time, but are more along the lines of ordering at least division strength units. Ordering individual unit A to fire on individual unit B is the job of squad or platoon commander, not a general. Now there's nothing wrong with gameplay at this level, but it at most can represent a very small sector of an overall war, far below front or theatre level.

Anyway, the distressing truth is that reasonably large conventional wars are won more by logistics and materiel production than brilliant tactics or strategy. But really, nobody wants to play Supply Officer IV: The Great Sock Shortage*.

*Expansion pack for Supply Officer IV: Fuel Economizer

[factotum]

And what I consider a good Strategy game? What about one where when you have a battle going on, and there are stuff you need to give your attention elsewhere, anything

Thanks for answering a question completely different to the one I asked. The question I asked was: do you think there is a better RTS than Starcraft? Note the initials. RTS as a genre existed long before Starcraft did, and I'm pretty sure every iteration has worked pretty much the same--I certainly remember that my troops were so stupid they'd lie down and fire at an enemy tank while it proceeded to roll over the top of them back in Command and Conquer. So, if all RTS games work like that, how is Starcraft particularly bad?

Also note that I said I don't like RTS much, and mostly for the same reasons as you--too little time to make decisions, too much micromanagement--but IN ITS GENRE I don't see any reason not to give Starcraft the crown of "best ever".

[GreatLordParry]

I certainly remember that my troops were so stupid they'd lie down and fire at an enemy tank while it proceeded to roll over the top of them back in Command and Conquer.

That's where microing would come in hand, I've been able to keep some dude's grizzly busy for as long as the conscript's hp bar as it proceeded to run over me (of course, the conscript'd die due to the cannon, but that's something different)



and the first RTS to my knowledge was a game called Herzog Zwei (or however it's spelled) for Sega Genesis. There was also Dune.

[Inhuman Bot]

and the first RTS to my knowledge was a game called Herzog Zwei (or however it's spelled) for Sega Genesis. There was also Dune.

Yeah, but Herzog Zwei was horrible, even for the time... As I recall. :smalltongue:

[Winthur]

Gentlemen.

I think that a few people have gripes with StarCraft hijacking this topic, so click here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101411&page=29) and write here if you have any gripes with StarCraft going beyond simple "I just don't like it".

[lobablob]

Gentlemen.

I think that a few people have gripes with StarCraft hijacking this topic, so click here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101411&page=29) and write here if you have any gripes with StarCraft going beyond simple "I just don't like it".

The point of this topic is to talk about games you believe to be over rated, I think its your defence of star craft that is causing the problem.

[chiasaur11]

Yeah, but Herzog Zwei was horrible, even for the time... As I recall. :smalltongue:

You play as a robot that turns into a plane.

A Robot that turns into a plane with armies of tank drones.

Horrible? I doubt that.

(Also, EGM said it was one of the top 100 games of all time. So, might be good, I guess.)

[nooblade]

You know, parts of this Starcraft talk make me want to dust my copy off.
But parts of it also make me think that it is, in fact, overrated in certain circles and, well, nations, especially what nooblade wrote about the importance of a predetermined strategy.

I'm going to make a comment about strategy games in general based on things I think I've learned from Starcraft.

The thing about strategy games is, it's difficult to make one where a person interested enough in winning (and in possession of functional mental facilities) can't just figure everything out ahead of time. Even if you can't work the numbers out very well outside of a game, you know what to expect after playing a few thousand games.

I like what Warty said. Strategy is a bit overrated.


But I still like Starcraft as an "e-sport" more than most media-covered sports. The progamers are still coming up with things that are impressive to me, most of them micro-related. That's always a fun way of pulling new situations out of the game.

[thegurullamen]

agreed , also main character cant speak a word of his own language, he mangles those few lines he has, so that Jackie Chan sounds like Shakespeare in comparison.

I agree that GTAIV is overrated (10s across the board? Come on. Fun has to factor in somewhere.) However, I have a problem in that I can see why it was reviewed so well. If you can get past the atrocious driving controls, the game's amazingly rendered and as a result immersive. It's the only GTA game that's pulled me in through visuals alone (which it would have to considering that lackluster soundtrack.) And the story is well above average. I stopped playing before I left the first island, which left me with the impression that this was just another GTA game with flat albeit consistent characters. Roman helped cement this view; half of me quitting was inspired by his constant one-upmanship, BS and gloating. Then, when I saw my brother playing it sometime later, it showed Roman had some depth to him. Decently written depth. I watched my brother finish the game and for the most part, it's a good (or, for Rockstar, a ****ing amazing) tale about tradition versus cultural change, old world versus new.

So, after all of that, part of me wanted and still wants to love this game, to get pulled all the way in. But the controls. Driving's a chore, there are no planes (which is realistic, I suppose, but it's a step down from its predecessor which is never good,) driving's a chore, half of the game is bogged down with superficial dates that are almost worse than escort missions, driving is a chore and they screwed with small details from earlier games that made gameplay flow better. For example, why does it take Niko so long to turn around? Why can't he run worth a damn? Why can't I ever execute a 90 degree e-brake turn at any speed over 15 mph? Sure, it's more realistic, but realism is an okay sacrifice if the end result is a more entertaining game.

In the end, it's a work of art, but as a game, it flounders. Too bad I couldn't figure that one out before I bought it.

[warty goblin]

I'm going to make a comment about strategy games in general based on things I think I've learned from Starcraft.

The thing about strategy games is, it's difficult to make one where a person interested enough in winning (and in possession of functional mental facilities) can't just figure everything out ahead of time. Even if you can't work the numbers out very well outside of a game, you know what to expect after playing a few thousand games.

While familiarity with a game after a few hundred or so plays is inevitable, I don't think that neccessarily has to mean that the optimum way to play is to sit down with a predetermined plan of action, build order and so forth. That sort of thing is, I suspect, greatly enabled by games being designed to allow this.

Consider a random (or more likely semirandom) map. You might know some things about it based on the game; that Gold tends to be located in mountainous areas or what have you, but with even a small amount of shuffling if you don't know where the mountains are, you can't count on being able to build a Gold Mine within five minutes right next to your base. Now you have to account for maybe not finding Gold for six minutes, or maybe having to alter your other plans in order to protect a Mine dangerously close to enemy territory.

But I think that one can go farther than this. Why not randomize tech trees, unit upgrades and so on? If I don't know who I'm fighting, what I'm fighting with, and over what terrain I'm fighting when I sit down, I think it would be hard to rely on a build order. Certainly a player that did attempt to do so would be demolished by a more skilled strategist better able to account for the unknown. This is, I suspect already true to some degree in most games, but the fact that people do compare and obsess over build orders I think is proof enough that it is hardly the dominant paradigm.

[Inhuman Bot]

But I think that one can go farther than this. Why not randomize tech trees, unit upgrades and so on? If I don't know who I'm fighting, what I'm fighting with, and over what terrain I'm fighting when I sit down, I think it would be hard to rely on a build order. Certainly a player that did attempt to do so would be demolished by a more skilled strategist better able to account for the unknown. This is, I suspect already true to some degree in most games, but the fact that people do compare and obsess over build orders I think is proof enough that it is hardly the dominant paradigm.

Personally, I'd say it creates large balance issues.

Let's say one person gets knights for a 100 gold reaserch as his first upgrade. The other person's first upgrade is nuclear weapons, but that's costs 2 billion gold, and he'll never get it before the other guy swamps him with his pointy sticks and shiny armour.

[factotum]

If you can get past the atrocious driving controls

Atrocious controls? I actually thought GTA4 had the best controls of any game in the series--for a start, it's the first one that actually hit on the idea of using an ANALOGUE control for throttle so you don't have to be either flat-out or stationary! If there's an issue with driving in GTA4 it's to do with the physics engine, not the controls: e.g. cars in GTA4 are both much slower and much more inclined to skid than any real-world car is, and it's almost impossible to control a slide once it starts in the game. Earlier games sacrificed some realism for the ability to handbrake cars round 90 degree bends without needing Michael Schumacher's skills to keep them on the road.

[Rockphed]

Anyway, the distressing truth is that reasonably large conventional wars are won more by logistics and materiel production than brilliant tactics or strategy. But really, nobody wants to play Supply Officer IV: The Great Sock Shortage*.

*Expansion pack for Supply Officer IV: Fuel Economizer

That actually sounds like a pretty cool game, depending on how it is handled. Besides, what could possibly be bad about a game that mentions socks in the title?

[oyhr]

Earlier games sacrificed some realism for the ability to handbrake cars round 90 degree bends without needing Michael Schumacher's skills to keep them on the road.

Yeah, that's what the problem is. Cars in real life aren't particularly known for being easy to control, after all.

[Yora]

Anyway, the distressing truth is that reasonably large conventional wars are won more by logistics and materiel production than brilliant tactics or strategy. But really, nobody wants to play Supply Officer IV: The Great Sock Shortage*.

*Expansion pack for Supply Officer IV: Fuel Economizer
You don't know the German customers. We would play such things! Settlers 2 and Anno 1602 are about the greatest hits regarding german games on the german market. And we consume unhealthy amounts of soccer manager games. :smallbiggrin:

[Johnny Blade]

And we consume unhealthy amounts of soccer manager games. :smallbiggrin:
Now that's something that really belongs here. Fußball/Fifa Manager. The entire franchise.
Unless the newest version has something like an AI, that is.

[SandroTheMaster]

Again, please point me to an RTS that doesn't recuire micro. Age of empires demanded it. Total anihilation demanded it.

There certainly isn't an RTS that completely eschews the micro, but there are some that HUGELY downplays it. Total Annihilations already downplayed considerably at its time, the way there were several possible commands to your units so they make automatic actions.

More recently there's the already mentioned Sins of a Solar Empire, where you do get a little advantage for directing your battleships to use active powers at the right time at the right target, but it is immensely more important to let the AI handle the powers and keep acting in the large scale throughout the game.

Then there's Supreme Commander. It does require a bit of micro, but mainly when you are planning an airstrike or when handling the commander. But there are dozens of tools to let the units attack at their own pace, coordinate attacks, transport ferries, and so on to downplay the micromanaging by making it completely unnecessary. While you gain so little by directly controlling your units that, AGAIN, it is more important to put your attention elsewhere when your units are battling.

There are other examples, but these are the favorite of the RTS elite, if you want to call it. I know I enjoy largely to be able to be this far from my units when I'm playing a strategy game. Sure, if you want you can also put these games in your overrated list, and I sure know they are in some aspects. Mainly, the atrocious tech-requirements from these games (TA was pretty demanding at its time).

[AslanCross]

I saw this thread a long time ago, but realized I didn't have a strong enough opinion on most games to post.

Now I realized I do indeed have one in mind: Defense of the Ancients.
On the OP's scale it's probably a 2 or a 3. I recognize that it CAN be enjoyable, but my main gripe with it is that people in this country play it as if it's the only thing Warcraft III can do, and even worse, as if it's the only multiplayer game that exists.

This might be more of a gripe against gamers in this part of the world, actually, since many of them tend to just play what everyone else is playing instead of forming their own opinions.

What's worse is that they call me a n00b for not wanting to play DotA, which is nothing more than a severely-dumbed down WC3, while they chicken out when I challenge them to WC3 because they just know I can out-micro them at every turn.

[jamroar]

Yeah, but Herzog Zwei was horrible, even for the time... As I recall. :smalltongue:



Hardly. It was one of the few good head-to-head console games around, until the coming of Street Fighter II and its clones.

Dune 2 (1 was an adventure game) didn't even have multiplayer.

[dsmiles]

Strong opinions here:

World of Warcrack: 4 Waaayyy overrated.
Evercrack: 5 Even more Waaayyy overrated.
DDO and FFO: 3 not great at all.

Also, I would like to give props to an underrated game if I may:
F.E.A.R.: Not great multiplayer, but I thouroughly enjoy single player mode.

[Hann]

I hate everything you like.

[Domochevsky]

I hate everything you like.

Like Necro-ing? :smallconfused:

[Inhuman Bot]

I hate everything you like.

http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/3741/threadnecromancyns1ja0.jpg
I love that card, okay? >.>

[Roland St. Jude]

Like Necro-ing? :smallconfused:

No, that he likes, apparently.

Sheriff of Moddingham: Thread necromancy.