Topic: Unpopular Gaming Opinions

Wow, thank you all for the feedback! I think that I'd like to give HZD a go one more time based on what you all have told me. If I still can't enjoy it, then maybe it just isn't the game for me.

@Roger Roger I don't normally do second playthroughs because I like to complete a game's main story and then consider it "finished." I may replay a game if I really enjoyed (such as Portal 2), but normally I just move on to the next game. Still, if that ending is really exceptional...

@themcnoisy I forgot about the sidequests. Whoever decided loot boxes should be a reward in that game is insane. Horizon has some of the worst quest reward of any game I’ve ever played. I wish I was exaggerating.
Funnily enough, this does make me want to play some more of the game enjoy the combat/hunting, though.

@Jaz007 Lootboxes?

I can't remember the rewards, like at all! I can remember the overall world and trying to take on that massive Hawk in the mountains. As for opening rewards, I have no idea. Did the equipment come in normal, rare and epic variants or something like that?

@themcnoisy You’d get sh*te reward boxes that contained a random amount of materials. It was.. inconsequential at best.

@nessisonett A roll of copper wire and a bag of bolts for Aloy for defeating that 20ft robot Dino. Yeah, thanks for that, ya bozo.

@themcnoisy You got crates of different levels that have random materials. They’re so stupid they don’t even feel worth opening. There was no good feeling or consistency to it as the fact that you can’t remember them shows lol.

@nessisonett @Jaz007 @JohnnyShoulder ahhh yes, I recall now.

It's weird actually games from the PS1 and earlier I remember a lot. More recent games wade into this middle ground of generecism. So similar. I struggle to remember game mechanics. Probably why I enjoy the likes of The Witness, Fez and Rocket League so much.

@Jaz007 lmao By the time I was done with the game, I had about a dozen boxes that just stayed in my inventory because I was already maxed out on the stuff inside of them. Nobody ever gave me Blaze canisters, despite half the weapons eating through my supply of the stuff like a fat boy in a candy shop. Although harvest arrows + abusing the blast wire challenge made the stuff easy enough to grind out.

I will say this, though: no game, before or sense, has had quest rewards that feel as poorly balanced or pointless as the ones in The Witcher 3. There is zero sense in completing non-main story related side-quests in that game and, past a certain point, zero reason to engage in monster contracts.

@Ralizah I’ve played over 100H and while gear rewards are kinda stupid, money feels just tight enough that it’s a decent reward and you feel like you need it. The quests are also a million times more interesting than Horizon’s too.

@Jaz007 Yeah, I played every side quest in the Witcher 3 for story reasons. Rewards were mostly useless but they were 99% brilliant in terms of the actual story. Horizon had default Sim #5 badly lip sync telling you to go to a map marker so they can be largely useless against the enemies you fight.

@nessisonett The lip syncing in Horizon makes Aloy look more robotic than Markus, Kara and Connor from Detroit Become Human, who are literally androids

An opinion of mine is that many indie games are pointlessly difficult to the point of being a bad game design choice.

Hollow Knight, Hyper Light Drifter, and others I can't remember at this time are within this description.

Being "old school" is not good reasoning as old games were designed to suck down quarters or artificially make very short games appear longer. We've moved on from that.

I'm not saying designers are obligated to make things accessible to general audiences. But games are for fun and leisure, and to be praised as a masterpiece and design choices that result in absurd roadblocks take it down a few notches to "average" quality. Not bad, but not successful in all aspects necessary.

Like an eccentric director who sticks annoying crap in an otherwise good movie.

Rant over. Thank you for your time.

ALOY HAS THE EXACT SAME FACE AS ZAC EFFRON

Now you can't unsee it, sorry.

@sentiententity I can’t say Hollow Knight or Hyper Light Drifter fall into that category but Cuphead definitely leans slightly too hard into frustration at times. I think people get different things out of games and personally I quite like a challenge. That being said, I like it when games are fair and when devs tip the scales for difficulty’s sake, I do not like that at all.

@Kidfried It’s specifically the run and gun levels that drag it down for me. I loved the game but those levels felt cobbled together, as if they threw together frustrating mechanics to see what stuck. It’s more that when I finished those levels I reacted with ‘thank f*ck it’s over’ rather than ‘wow I’m so proud of myself’. Although I take back what I said about Hollow Knight, I’ve been doing some optional content that is... not fun.

@RogerRoger The problem more lies in 70 dollars, euros and pounds just not being the same price. 70 dollars, sure I’d pay that but 70 pounds is a premium product. For games to be that price and still include lootboxes, bugs or just not be very good? That’s a lot of money down the drain. Even more games will slip into obscurity now as you’ll only pay for the big exclusives. This is where services like Game Pass will scoop up smaller games that wouldn’t get a look in otherwise.

Cuphead is challenging, for sure, but not a single moment of it felt unfair to me. Even the Run n Gun levels felt well-designed for speed running and the like.

And yeah, you can definitely tailor the experience to make it easier or harder on yourself.

To be honest, I wouldn't characterize any of the games listed as being overly difficult. I didn't particularly enjoy HLD, but that wasn't because of the difficulty.

Hollow Knight's DLC content gets a little ridiculous, though, I'll admit.

@nessisonett I agree that Sony need to be careful that the pricing doesn’t ruin the indie developers, especially after they’ve been championing the smaller studios.

They really ought to have a specific area on their online store for such games to help highlight them but that also causes issues that they become gatekeepers and where is the line drawn for what is”indie”?

@Ralizah The Hollow Knight DLC is tough but The Grimm Troupe is fair I thought (easy to say as I beat it) and the Path of Pain is something else. The Pantheons were too much for me but the devs have said a lot of that was designed to challenge the best players who had asked for such a thing.

I think that’s quite cool but as someone who likes to get everything out of the games they play, it was a little frustrating. It also meant my final days with the game we’re struggling and failing with the Pantheons which slightly tarnishes my memory of the game.

I can't see i see a problem with the idea. Actually, I think it's a bit odd that most retail games tend to be about the same price. Some are such different products and the amount of resources required can vary hugely, as well as the quality of the experience.

You get luxury goods and value goods in plenty of other markets.

Plus if you can't afford or don't want to pay full price for the game just wait until price drops. No one is forcing anyone to buy a game at day 1. I've already got Demon Souls for 5 quid less than the RRP and it is not even out yet.