Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@sorteddan I think the worst part of that sequence for me was fighting the people that kept rushing the area with the steps on each side.

Thanks for the info on Requiem. I have no idea when I'll actually play it, but that's still good to know. Maybe sometime after another 30 FPS game so it's not quite as jarring.

On the difficulty conversation - I definitely think the length of games has made this worse, too. The 12 hour linear story game seems mostly dead now. So if its taken you forty hours to get to the third act, it sorta makes it all the more difficult to give up because you've invested so much time into the game, even if the third act might be a tedious slog. But then potentially forcing yourself through those last hours that aren't any fun for you will spoil the game for you regardless, so there is really no way to win.

Honestly not sure if this is to be considered an unpopular gaming opinion as I haven't seen anyone else bring this up about Red Dead Redemption II, but I absolutely hate realistic mechanics in video games.

I started playing this evening by first doing a side mission with one of the characters. The objective was to rob a homestead. When I got there and killed everyone, the character told me that I shouldn't have killed all of them because now nobody would say where they hid the cash. Then he left and there wasn't a way to retry the mission. Great.

Then I decided to do another mission on the other side of the map. Wanted to fast travel there with a stagecoach. Couldn't do that because I had a bounty on me and the drivers wouldn't drive someone with a bounty. Can't get rid of it either because it's too much money. Even if I got rid of it, I would have to get rid of the bounty in that region that I wanted to fast travel to as well if I wanted to get back. Great, so I had to ride my horse all the way there.

So when I got there, there were bounty hunters after me. I killed them, but then I became wanted and thus the mission got locked because nobody would want to associate themselves with a wanted person. Good thing I saved just before, so I could just load up the previous save file and then do the mission. When I arrived to the destination of the mission, the objective was to kill a cougar inside a cave. The cougar jumped me and during the skirmish, I dropped my hat. I didn't realise this until I was outside the cave, so I had to go back in and get it just as I was about to ride back. I retrieved the hat and as soon as I got back on my horse, my horse tripped and I nearly died.

All of this happened within one hour. During one hour did all of this crap happen to me, simply because Rockstar thought it was a good idea to make a game as realistic as possible.

I mean seriously, did the developer not stop and think: will these mechanics make the game more fun? Nothing about these mechanics make the game more fun. The whole point of video games is to get immersed into a fictional world absent of enough realism to make it fun to play. I'm seriously terrified of how much they're going to ruin GTA 6 if they decided to go the same route as RDR2. For example, imagine getting caught by the police, getting arrested, having to hire a lawyer to defend you in court, standing in court and trying to argue for your case, getting sentenced to a life-time in prison and then spending in-game time in a penitentiary. Best game ever!

On a side note, these mechanics aren't enough to ruin RDR2 for me. But they add absolutely nothing to the experience except for pain.

@LtSarge It’s just a matter of taste. From what I’ve seen, it’s probably the more popular opinion in these circles to hate on RDR II and realism on games! Personally I love the way they weave realistic mechanics into it, there’s not enough games that fully immerse you in a historical period in that way, LA Noire springs to mind as another. But everyone’s mileage varies. I guess I think that the whole attitude of letting games be ‘fun’ is a little limiting if that makes sense, like if every movie needed to have three acts or if every song needed to have a verse, chorus structure. Variety is good, I’d rather have something too immersive as I’m a sucker for those sorts of things!

@nessisonett Well to clarify, I'm not saying that there shouldn't be any realistic mechanics at all in these games. For example, RDR2 has a wealth of customisation options for clothing, weapons, your horse and so on. I don't care much for these aspects, but I always appreciate them for people who love to customise as much as possible.

But that doesn't mean that there should be realistic mechanics that make the experience annoying, as I described above. Customisation options are optional, but I can't choose if I want my horse to trip or not.

I'm the opposite lol I think GOW 2018 is one of the most overrated games in modern times, it is like the most bang average 6.5 out of 10 experience I can think of. Then Ragnarok came along and delivered for me the game everyone was telling me 2018 was meant to be over the years, I think Ragnarok is a masterpiece.

@LtSarge I mean… to be pedantic, to avoid your horse tripping then you have to choose your pathing carefully. It’s more entertaining than AC Odyssey letting you jump off mountains without taking any damage!

@LtSarge If anything, you're selling me on RDR2. The attention to detail sounds truly incredible.

@Ralizah RDR2 is the most detailed world I’ve played. It looks fantastic on PS4 and runs solidly for such an enormous detailed world.

There’s rudimentary sim aspects, but also plenty of ‘gamey-ness’ to be had. For example, depending how much and how often you eat, you get thinner or more hefty, which in turn has some (albeit small) effects on gameplay - a thinner Arthur is quicker but has less health, whereas a beefier Arthur can withstand more damage but is less agile. Arthur’s hair and beard constantly grow and you can choose to ignore your grooming and hygiene and end up looking like a homeless man, or you can regularly visit the barber and have neatly manicured hair and face - each option can have (again, small) effects on how you’re perceived in the world by NPCs.

I’ve mentioned before how impressed I was when I accidentally ran over a random sheep in a town and killed it and left the carcass behind and each time I visited that town the carcass was amazingly still there but showed gradual decomposition every few in-game days until finally several weeks later it was just a skeleton of the animal, still lying there in the side of the road. It’s crazy how they would put that kind of thing in there which has no real gameplay effect but helps with making the game feel more authentic.

There ‘gamey-ness’ of it relates to things like the shooting, which many people feel is a little too easy and automatic with its auto-aiming (although it’s been a while and I think you can change how much aim assist you want in the settings) and silly fictional moments that are sprinkled in there.

If you want a simulation open world sandbox with a surprisingly solid story and character study, then it’s a high recommend for sure. The main issue is that you have to be able to tolerate the turn of the century Western / Cowboy backdrop. I’m not a fan of Westerns, but still absolutely loved the game. It has a lot of parts where you might get frustrated (like described above by Sarge) and the opening hours are extremely slow paced and a huge put-off for many players, but once you get into a groove it’s fantastic. The game narrative is great and on par with Sony’s first party storytelling and it can be played in that simple linear way in about 50 hrs, however the game is at its best when you play with no real timeline and spend plenty of time wandering about this detailed world and discovering countless little moments on the side. I think I spent about 80 hours or so and still left many things undiscovered or undone (such as the whole hunting and fishing side activities, searching for fossils, and other various superficial side quests).

And previously playing RDR1 (for which RDR2 is a prequel) is partially beneficial, but not essential. There is some context from RDR1 to one of the characters, but they are mostly tangential in this game. If you end up liking RDR2 then RDR1 could conceivably be played second as a sequel chronologically.

Realism in games and difficulty spikes (and honestly many of the game design elements we discuss) ultimately relate to this concept of ‘fun’ that was mentioned. Scholars on the subject have tried to objectify ‘fun’ and I’ve read different theories on it. One I liked was that there are 8 basic kinds of ‘fun’:
sensory pleasure, fantasy, narrative, challenge, fellowship, discovery, expression, submission

However, placing the sole motivation for playing on ‘having fun’ ultimately leads to an incomplete analysis. As one author says (Dustin DiTommaso) “Fun is too diluted of a concept. It doesn’t distinguish the unique psychological experience of gameplay that leads to sustained engagement.” I think Neil Druckmann referenced some of this logic when he was talking about TLoU2 and the fact that many parts of it would not be ‘fun’ by most standards, but would nevertheless be fulfilling or engaging otherwise.

Anyway, not to nerd-out of academic fluff, but I think it’s an interesting discussion.

@Th3solution That is actually incredibly cool (the sheep carcass thing). I hear your horse's testicles also shrink in the cold?

The amount of detail injected into this game is so far off the charts and it becomes fascinating. Like, in general, I'm inclined to also prefer convenience over realism, but I'm willing to tolerate a lot if the game seems to invest itself fully in being immersive.

I actually really like the inclusion of sim elements in games like these. GTA: San Andreas made it where your character could get fat if he ate too many fast food meals, and you'd have to go to the gym to work it off, lol. They stripped out fun stuff like that in GTA V.

I played RDR1 when it first came out. I don't remember too much about the story, but it was fun enough. Cowboy GTA. The sequel sounds like a gigantic leap in terms of how interactive and immersive it is.

@Ralizah sounds like you need some Kingdom Come: Deliverance. RPG/Medieval life sim 😁

I can't believe the initial comments of @LtSarge about RDR2 that started the discussion, either haha. "During one hour did all of this crap happen to me, simply because Rockstar thought it was a good idea to make a game as realistic as possible"

It did make me laugh at the "why me" element of it. As it was basically "I killed a bunch of people and there were consequences. And my horse also fell over as I steered it into a pothole" So, that's "why you" to be fair to Rockstar 😛

It was an entertaining read, though 😁 and it made me think of all the reasons I loved RDR2.

I do think there is a line. Like I see no appeal in survival games at all, needing to manage your temperature and thirst and hunger etc, no clue what the appeal is to those games, I have to do that in real life already. I don't wanna worry about that in a game.

@Ralizah Definitely give it a shot. It's a slow burn but like others have mentioned, it's about getting immersed into its world and basically living in it. Despite all the issues I have with it, I can't stop playing it.

I like being able to watch hunger and thirst, makes a survival game more intense. It’s easy in real life to get food or water ( Yes I’m aware not everyone but that’s a discussion for another day) versus being stranded in a world like Pathologic.

@Ralizah I feel like we’ve talked for enough years on here that I can tell you’ll have gripes with RDR II and its complete disrespect for the player’s time but it’s absolutely worth playing. It’s not often you get to really immerse yourself in a world like that.

@Ralizah I didn’t ever notice the horse testicle shrinkage, but I wouldn’t be surprised. 😂

But yeah, you hit the nail there - you have to sacrifice some convenience for the realism and immersion elements, but in this case it’s really worth it.

@nessisonett @LtSarge I guess I'll need to make some room in my gaming schedule for this at some point. It'd be a shame to completely miss out on such an immersive experience, even if it's aggravating in certain respects.

I'm just so hesitant to pile on yet another 100+ hour epic into my backlog. That said, I don't hesitate with new Atlus games.

@Ravix Another one I've looked at, but I'm not a gigantic fan of the setting or art-style, so I haven't really been pushed over the edge into buying it.

@Ralizah art style? 👀 Not...sure... if... joking 😆

@Ravix If it’s any consolation, you’ll be pleased to know I bit the bullet on KCD and purchased the blasted thing today. The sale ends day after tomorrow and I had a hard time saying no to $3, which seemed a pittance for something that I think I’ll actually enjoy. By my calculations that’s a value ratio of about 3 cents an hour (if it goes 80-100 hr), which is basically like saying it’s free in today’s economy.

Unfortunately, what is not free is my time. That will be the limiting factor as to whether I ever get to take control of Henry’s plight.