Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

@Jaz007 As a character or the game?

Unpopular gaming opinion: Shadows of the Empire is great!

@KALofKRYPTON it controlled terribly though and some of the difficulty spikes was way to big but yeah still a fun game

@FullbringIchigo 'Generally ropey' is probably a good descriptor, loved it though.

Actually, speaking of...

There's nothing wrong with licenced games. Whether original storylines based on a film or television franchise, or simple adaptations of the latest movie, a vast majority of my fondest gaming moments have come from licenced tie-in releases. They seem to have all but disappeared in recent years (save Star Wars, but we all know how well that one's being handled, thanks EA) and it makes me really sad. That's nothing against the game franchises I love (Metal Gear, Tomb Raider, Mass Effect, Uncharted, Sonic the Hedgehog, Hitman, etc.) but there's plenty of room for both.

The best parts of Batman: Arkham Knight (a franchise so broad, the Arkham games were almost unrecognisable up against the films and animated shows I grew up with) were the DLC packs featuring the Burtonmobile, the Batfleck suit and race courses based on Batman '66. As much as I enjoyed playing Arkham Knight, I kinda wish we'd had a game based on Batman V Superman instead (something more substantial than the lazy mobile endless runner we seemed to get as an afterthought).

24: The Game is one I often forget about, and I shouldn't because it was absolutely fantastic. Okay, on the surface it was a slightly-wonky, scattershot jack-of-all-trades but the authenticity with which it was constructed made it essential for me, as a huge fan of the show. Over the years, I've binge-watched all the seasons through a couple times, but I always take a break between Day 2 and Day 3 to play the game, because it fits in so perfectly and explains a lot of otherwise-unresolved story elements.

Bond is the one I miss the most. Whether adapting a film or presenting an original story, the basis of the Bond character just fits so perfectly into gaming. Over the years, Bond games have allowed you to run-and-gun, to sneak around using stealth, to drive cars and boats and fly helicopters and planes... heck, in some of the more diverse entries, you can even play blackjack or poker in a several casino-based minigames. It doesn't even matter what the films are doing; when there was uncertainty between the Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig eras, they went back and adapted From Russia With Love. There's a truckload of available material to draw from if you're not feeling up to writing an original narrative, and they'd sell like hot cakes, providing they were (at a minimum) functional and relatively bug-free. You could even slap on a multiplayer mode with microtransactions for skins based on Bond history; I wouldn't hesitate to pay an extra £1.50 for Christopher Walken, or to put Bond in a Moonraker space suit.

Apparently, however, what few licenced games we do get are pre-judged as "gonna almost certainly be rubbish" by journalists and vocal communities, or are dismissed off-hand as "bargain bin fodder" that "belongs on Android only". That's a real shame, because it means the purse-holders at the big companies aren't gonna take the risk. I wish they would.

@RogerRoger
One of my biggest childhood gaming disappointments was borrowing my school friend's copy of The Living Daylights and Sinclair Lightgun - just to find that it wouldn't work on my 128k +2. There were tears.

@RogerRoger Agreed, a bad history has done some examples. For Bond, I loved Blood Stone. I played a lot of times and almost beat it on 007 difficulty (which wasn’t as difficult after playing g the game so many times), before losing interest the very end due to also playing it so many times. It had so many melee animations. It made Uncharted and just about anything but Arkham look like it had variety’s compard to it.
It’s also funny because we’re all hyped out of our minds for Spider-man, yet there’s also ways so much caution for others.

@RogerRoger some of my favourite games have been movie or T.V licence games, The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers, The Return of the King and The Third Age, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Goldeneye, Star Trek Voyager Elite Force, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Ghostbusters The Video Game and Toy Story 2 just to name a few

@KALofKRYPTON The character.

@Jaz007 The thing is, Spider-Man is like the Arkham series; an original take on the characters and universe based on the overall mythos. It seems everybody demands originality nowadays, whereas I'd argue that there's nothing wrong with a straightforward adaptation (although original games, like Blood Stone 007, are awesome in their own right).

@FullbringIchigo Star Trek: Voyager - Elite Force is another game I should've mentioned in the same breath as 24: The Game. A similarly-flawed game from a technical perspective, but one heck of an immersive, faithful experience. Good shout.

Total Annihilation is the best RTS game ever made.

@RogerRoger So what's the difference between Blood Stone and 24? It's the Craig bond like the movies, it just doesn't follow one of the movies like how the 24 game doesn't follow any of the seasons. It wasn't like the Jason Borne game.

@RogerRoger Ithonk a big reason for pure licensed to disappear was the fact that making games takes way longer than it used to. It used to be possible to create a game alongside a movie, but that's just not the case anymore.

Also, it's really expensive to get actors into the game now, because it requires mocap etc. It is a practical thing.

Also, I am darn happy there are less licensed game. For developers it must be way more awesome to create your own universe than remake what others have done. I don't require originality, but I know games tend to be better when devs have the freedom to make what they want.

Unpopular opinion 1: Sonic Generations is better than Crash Bandicoot trilogy, Super Mario Galaxy is better than Super Mario Odyssey, Oblivion is better than Skyrim, Twilight princess is better than Breath of the wild, Alone in the dark (1992) is better than any Resident evil game and any Resident evil clone ever made, Endless Ocean and Trauma center are better than most Wii U games (tbh they are better than EVERY WIi U game imo), Country returns is better than Tropical freeze, Soul Calibur 3 is better than SC4 and 5... (I could go on but I think that's enough)

and because of that

unpopular opinion 2: backward compatibility is absolutely necessary and indispensable for consoles, expecially now that PCs are becoming more and more user friendly and Windows is becoming a really good OS so consoles need to be much more competitive to remain interesting for a gamer

@Kidfried I time as well as money.

AAA games cost a fortune to develop - and something tied to a lucrative licence will also has the associated licencing costs. if it goes down badly, it can kill a studio - or at least leave a big publisher with a big bill at the end of it all.

@Jaz007 I'll try and answer this without spoiling too much, in case folk haven't watched the show, played the game or both, but 24: The Game's entire storyline is focused on resolving specifically-unresolved plot elements from Day 2 of the show, whilst also explaining new plot elements that randomly showed up in Day 3. It's not just "oh, and here's another random day of Jack Bauer's life" and the level of that integration is stunning (they got Alan Dale, the actor playing the Vice-President, face-scanned, motion-captured and in a recording booth for literally one three-second shot of him crawling out of something and going "Uh... uh-huh!" simply because they had to, because he'd played the character in the previous season of the show).

There is major criticism against the final two hours of Day 2 because it introduces some stuff and some characters that seemingly disappear and are never heard of again, and then suddenly we're in Day 3 with all these new characters and different places for people to be. The Game answers all of those points and more, yet because so many people never played it they're missing an integral part of the story. It may not be based on a season, but it's designed to be one, and a pretty important one at that.

Blood Stone 007, meanwhile, is excellent at capturing the feel of the Craig-era Bond films, but has absolutely nothing to do with them. You can lift it right out and there's nothing lost. There are suggestions that the mysterious "him" mentioned by Joss Stone's character would've turned out to have been associated with Quantum and / or SPECTRE in Raven Software's planned sequel, but it was cancelled so we'll never know. That isn't a criticism of Blood Stone 007 in the slightest (obviously a victim of business decisions, the first part in a continuing story that'll now never be continued) but it did all seem a bit random and disjointed, and there were some pretty major gaps between its own internal logic and canon and that of Craig's films (the random Aston Martin clones being a prime example).

I've loved adaptations and original tales based on and / or in existing franchises equally, but I think adaptations are the ones which are currently unpopular to support, and that's what this topic is for so that's what I'm defending, I guess. With all that being said, my favourite Bond game of all time remains James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, something that had the best of both worlds by presenting a completely original tale, yet giving the villain a motivation based on the events of A View To A Kill. That's the way to do it, I reckon.

@Kidfried All fair points. I think it still can be done; there have been examples of concurrent development as recently as Cars 3 (okay, perhaps a little easier as the film itself is also a digital product) and the PS3 co-op shooter Star Trek, which was developed alongside Star Trek Into Darkness in 2012 / 2013 with all the bells and whistles imaginable (shame about the end result, but hey). You're right, though; because of rushed final products, like that example I just used, publishers and licence-holders are far less prepared to take the risk. Just think about how terrible the Skyfall DLC was for 007 Legends and wonder why we didn't get a Bond game to accompany SPECTRE three years later.

I dunno, though. I'd kill to be a developer handed the script for a major upcoming film and then told to expand the two-hour running time into an eight-hour interactive experience. Some of the better games based on films or television shows have had great creative fun explaining how things happened, or showing what's really written on some character's computer screens, or what this other character did between key scenes. I've talked enough about Bond, but a more recent example of this was the DLC for LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Ever wondered how C-3PO got his red arm? Probably not but, for those that do, there's a lovely, quite touching explanation to be found in a half-hour level (which is apparently canon, too).

Sorry. I seem to have an answer for everything today!

@KALofKRYPTON Ah, yes, but then there's a balance to be struck by the fact that more people are likely to buy something with a certain franchise plastered on the box. Just look at Star Wars: Battlefront II as a prime example; by all rights, that game shouldn't have been anywhere near the charts, but it's popped up in them several times over the past eight months... and, speaking of Bond, everybody blasted Tomorrow Never Dies on PSone and yet it still sold more than enough to make the Platinum label.

Okay, definitely shutting up now!

@RogerRoger Battlefront 2 is a good example. It's a game made on a respected engine, by a very talented team who've already put out a great (if limited) previous game of a reboot game series that was massively respected. I think a property that is so transcendent of medium like Star Wars will always find an audience; certainly when it is slightly removed from being a direct 'game of the film' situation.

I quite liked the Battlefront reboot. It was enough of a game for me, modes wise; and my only real issue was that there wasn't more made of Fighter Squadron. I fully intend on buying BF2 when it inevitabley becomes even cheaper. I like what I've heard of the single player and the beta showed off a much improved flight model.

@KALofKRYPTON just keep in mind with all the updates BF2 has needed it's coming in at 90gb on your HDD and that will only increase with all the upcoming updates too, i had to uninstall it as it was taking up enough room for me to install 3 other games

@FullbringIchigo Bloody hell! Is that for the disc version too?

@KALofKRYPTON yep because as with all the games this gen the entire thing is installed on the system, the disc is just basically a form of copyright protection/licence check