Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@AgentCooper Ha, on the flip side I motored through both of my runs on Cyberpunk during my paternity leave when I had my newborn sleeping on my lap and the wife got a few hours sleep between feeds.

@AgentCooper Although I can’t speak for the newborn parenting aspects, but I am a busy guy, what with work and outside friends, family, hobbies, etc. All the extraneous real life diversions result in those random 45-60 minute openings to spend gaming. I have stretches of 3-4 hour sessions sometimes, but the majority of the week has bite-sized amounts of game time. I’ve found one of the difference makers for determining if I will spend time with a game is whether it lets me save anywhere. If I have just an hour then I’ll spend it in Hogwart’s running around doing a couple exploration and item collecting and do a few puzzles and then save when I shut down. The game even lets one save in the middle of a story quest usually. The Souls games are great for this too, since you can save anywhere and there’s not huge hour-long story cutscenes that you’ll accidentally get in the middle of when you really need to shut the game down for some reason. There is the unfortunate lack of a pause function (if playing online) in the Souls game though, which annoys.

The worst offenders for a busy lifestyle are games where you can randomly wander into an area, trigger a cutscene and story mission without warning, and the game allows for no pausing or saving in the middle. I’ve been held captive by a game when I need to shut down and the game has a really long sequence that I can’t escape from for like an hour sometimes. 😅

I realize that games need their long story sections — I actually love those — but I appreciate it when they telegraph when they’re coming so I have the time to relax and soak it all in.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the most legitimately "next gen" feeling game I've played in years. Even if it's running on hardware that is achingly old and weak now. The enormous amount of environmental interactivity and complexity, the sheer scale and cohesiveness of the multi-layered world, etc. are enormously impressive. You can literally jump from the peak of one of the game's sky islands and descend into the cavernous depths below Hyrule with no loading screens. And this is running with relatively few bugs on a Switch lol.

Probably a more controversial take: I'm excited to see how generative AI will impact video game development. The idea of having actual conversations with AIs in the context of a video game is really cool, and some indies are already playing with the idea. Also interested in seeing how the technology speeds up development time on big projects.

@Ralizah I haven’t played TotK but I hear it’s great. There is a vocal camp that would complete dismiss it though as unworthy of play because it’s 30 fps. 🙄

@Th3solution I think TotK is not worth playing if you don't like building stuff. That aspect can completely ruin the game for certain people I think since it's such a huge part of the game. In fact, it made me drop it last year as I just couldn't bother playing it anymore. I vividly remember spending over half an hour at a part where I had to build a bridge and I just couldn't get it right due to the physics. I couldn't move on without the bridge, so it just ruined the pacing of the game for me. It's just ridiculous how heavily integrated that aspect is into the game as it's not for everyone. That's why I vastly prefer BotW over TotK due to its simplicity.

@LtSarge That is one of the reasons I skipped it. I loved Breath of the Wild, but the building stuff in Tears was a total turn off for me. That and the 30fps of course.

@JohnnyShoulder It's completely understandable. I mean, it seriously slows down the pacing of the game. Hopefully Nintendo drops this mechanic in future Zelda games if they keep making them open world.

@Th3solution It's a deeply creative and ambitious game that I have mixed feelings about.

But yeah, if people can't look at the hardware and appreciate what a marvel of programming the game represents, I dunno what to tell them at that point. The game running like it does at all on Switch is miraculous. 60fps was never an option with the available tech.

The developers made EVERYTHING physics-based, give you full access to use the materials of the world to make whatever you want (while still abiding by the physics systems in place), allow you to reverse momentum for moving objects, etc. When you're visiting the game's sky islands, for example, you can grab onto one of the crumbling blocks that fall from them and then reverse the momentum to climb into the sky. Or you can build a hot air balloon or hovercraft if you have the resources. Even then, the highest ones usually require you to ascend them from the bottom up once you reach them, using everything at your disposal to conquer the challenge of even reaching their surfaces. Or sometimes you'll need to fly over to them from neighboring sky islands that are more easily accessible.

This is on top of the existing survival game elements, where you need to hunt for food, dress appropriately for the weather, etc.

The dungeons and story delivery need some major work, IMO, but it's easily the most innovative open world I've ever seen. It's leagues ahead of what any other major developer is doing with that type of game design.

@LtSarge @JohnnyShoulder I wish the game started you off with the autobuild rune, since it makes the game way more accessible to people who hate Ultrahanding stuff. You can find recipes for building vehicles and whatnot by exploring. It obviously doesn't fully remove the creative element from the game, but it does make it feel much less dominated by that aspect.

I also prefer Breath of the Wild, which is a top five game for me overall. Mostly because that game felt like a perfect harmony of its various components, whereas TotK doesn't.

@Ralizah Sounds really interesting. It’s tough to pull off a game that has openness and flexible systems to approach exploration and objectives, and yet not have it become messy or buggy.

My experience with open games systems is mixed. Something like Dreams was just too much. The ability to make anything you can dream of sounds great on paper, but in practice it’s just too time consuming and arduous. But something like Death Stranding is great, where I loved being able to create and problem-solve navigating the open world with a select set of building tools to manipulate the environment to my advantage, and yet not have too many systems to become oppressive.

And I had tongue firmly in-cheek about the 30 fps. 😄 The fps snobbery among gamers is getting to be ridiculous now. I’m starting to see a lot of people ‘cutting off their nose to spite their face’ with their refusal to even consider a game if it’s not a solid 60 fps. It’s become cult-like in some enthusiast circles to harass and lambast any game that dares to drop to 59 frames for a couple seconds. 😅

@Th3solution One of the reasons the game took so long to come out is apparently because Nintendo spent the last year or so of development time just optimizing and bug-squashing, which is not a level of commitment to quality you see from many other AAA development teams out there. There was actually a GDC presentation recently from some of the game's designers talking about the chaos Link's Ultrahand ability (which you can use to effectively combine objects together in the environment to build structures, vehicles, etc.) caused during development lol.

Yeah, I admire what Dreams had to offer as a platform for creativity, but in practice it's not something I'd ever mess with personally. Discovered the same was true for Super Mario Maker, and stuck to playing the levels others created. Creativity isn't really my 'thing,' and it's undoubtedly one reason why I didn't fall in love with TotK to the same extent as its predecessor.

Yeah, while I like to know about performance from an informational point of view, the number of people who act like 30fps experiences are unplayable has become rather obnoxious. This fixation definitely became worse once Digital Foundry analyses grew in popularity.

I've played amazing games that didn't run well and boring games that run extremely well. It matters to some extent, of course, but the people who act like performance should be the main consideration when talking about a game drive me up a wall.

Granted, the people who care about this are mostly console gamers, who have only recently become accustomed to AAA games running at higher framerates. Yet somehow games like The Witcher 3 that struggled to hit 30fps consistently on PS4 were still enjoyable for them at the time.

@Ralizah @Th3solution I'd rather play the game first and find out for myself. Everyone will be different, but I find sudden changes in fram rates the most jarring. I've played plenty of games recently at 30 fps, with no issues. Others though, I have found really rough to play in performance mode.

I feel like this was a fairly popular opinion amongst my friends and as someone who is 75% through all of my buildings are terrible but I've managed to get this far so idk. I honestly felt like it wasn't that big of a deal

Is it an unpopular opinion to say that as annoying as 60 fps elitists are, people who moan about them are just as annoying? 😂 Like we get it, some people in that crowd do overblow what gaming is 30 fps is like - gaming in 30 fps is not "unplayable", but it is objectively inferior in all scenarios except when they put in an uncapped framerate where it is sometimes over 30 but most of the times worse. There you just want a fixed 30, if you must choose. However, it is also 2024, I think it should be okay to expect 60 fps at a minimum at this point, to not want to play games at 30 fps any more and be able to express that opinion without people saying '30 fps gaming is fine, stop overreacting!'.

@Pizzamorg 😂 That’s fair. It’s the “Unpopular Opinions” thread so every opinion is viable here.

I will say, of course 60 fps is better than 30 fps, all other things being equal. And if someone has performance ranked above every other aspect of the game’s design, then that’s their prerogative. There’s plenty of high performance 60-120 fps games to keep them busy if that’s their priority. They don’t have to play Tears of the Kingdom or Bloodborne or whatever.

You know I am gonna be there day one @Th3solution to play that Breath of the Wild Switch 2 rerelease in upscaled 4k 60 fps and will be living my best life 😂

@Pizzamorg shrug If people are gonna harp on about something in public, they're inviting disagreement with their views. Especially when it's unreasonable, and performance snobbery FREQUENTLY is.

It's not like people who quietly avoid lower framerate games are being harassed online or something. People who get pushback also tend to be people who whine endlessly about the issue.

I don't think it's a reasonable expectation to say: "I get to voice my complaints in public, often vociferously, but nobody is allowed to challenge those complaints."

Let’s see…

I prefer game performance and controls over the graphics. Even if the game looks terrible or is an older game, I’ll still play it as long as it runs well and has a great control scheme.

I don’t mind console exclusives going multi-platform. I think it’s more convenient when games are shared between platforms.

I like playing older games over most modern games. I don’t hate modern games (as I do play a couple) and I believe people that say good things about them, but most don’t interest me. I tend to like the feelings and vibes some retro games give off from the era they were released in.

I like shorter games over longer games. Longer games don’t fit into my schedule and I get impatient when I can’t complete a long game fast.

They aren’t super popular titles, but I think Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts and the remake of Conker’s Bad Fur Day were not terrible like what most people said. They do have flaws but I didn’t think Nuts and Bolts was entirely bad and had pretty likeable parts, and I actually prefer Bad Fur Day’s remake over the original despite having some slight gripes with it.

I know some people will be coming for my head over some of these lol. It’s fine if you disagree with me!

@Pastellioli this is probably one of the most balanced set of takes I’ve seen 😂 I don’t regard any of these as controversial, and I think you speak for most long-time gamers in your reasoning. Maybe your first one about controls and performance? Even then, Elden Ring shows us that people don’t care about eye-gushing graphics so long as everything else functions smoothly. You’re g 👍

@Enriesto While I do think a game having nice visuals and graphics is definitely a plus and a great addition, I, in my opinion, think it’s more important if the game is playable and performs well. If a game I am playing has good visuals but performs badly (like long waiting times or a low frame rate) or has poor controls, then I am less likely to revisit it or stop playing it. If I am playing a game that has good performance and control but poor graphics or outdated ones (mostly referring to retro games), I’ll keep on playing despite that, since I feel the way a game looks has little affect on the controls and performance.

With video games or any type of medium involving visuals (like an animated movie or animated show) you can still deliver a good and memorable experience even without stunning images and visuals. There are probably lots of games, movies and shows out there that everyone loves and fondly remembers despite the media not having the greatest visuals, animation, and outward appearance.

As I'm preparing to move, I'm seeing even clearer now how cumbersome it is to have a physical game collection. It's an unpopular opinion, but I'm genuinely looking forward to a more digital game future as it's not feasible for me to keep collecting games and not doing anything with them. I never replay games so there's actually no point in keeping them. In fact, I might consider selling my games in the future but I'll just have to see.

I actually like that Microsoft has stopped releasing most of their first-party titles physically on Xbox. That's one less console I have to collect games for. And I say "have to" because I don't really like paying full price for a digital game. At least with a physical game, I get something tangible and I can also sell it down the line if I want to. So I'm going to keep buying physical games on PlayStation and Nintendo but at least I can play Xbox games digitally through Game Pass.

I've also realised how cumbersome it is to collect consoles. With PS5 and Series X, there's literally no point in keeping my PS4 and Xbox One. For this reason, I'm also looking forward to a future where you can play all games directly from your TV through the cloud (I know you can do that already but the streaming quality still isn't quite there yet). That way you never need to keep buying new consoles, there will just be apps for PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo respectively. It'd just be so much more convenient.