You must log in or # to comment.
I liked Watch Dogs 1 mainly because I didn’t consume any pre-release media about it. Whatever downgrade there may have been, I was unaffected. The game and its story are about as Ubisoft as they come (and I don’t mean that in a particularly positive way), but it was great for fucking around.
I also liked Cyberpunk 2077’s launch version, but at the same time, I think the people who are trying to memory hole the objectively dogshit launch state of both 2077 and The Witcher 3 are perpetuating the problem.
I also liked Watch Dogs, I enjoyed the darker tone and it’s more serious setting. Good game play, story was good enough, a bit janky with some optimization issues. But overall it was good.
I don’t think I really cared about the downgrade either. But it really was around when my trust in what Devs and publishers were saying about their games was the lowest. So many games were bullshots and rendered trailers so you took the idea and if it was interesting you just waited to see the actual product.
Cyberpunk was also my game of the year, I had immense fun with the launch version and I was lucky enough to have minimal bugs and most were dumb shit. I think I had 2 which were gameplay and caused issues. It launched in a terrible state and I expect it as well, CDPR don’t have a great history of releasing bug free games. But, they do have a history of patching and fixing the broken bits. It also should not have been anywhere near the old gen consoles, that was stupid.
I adored Watch Dogs 2 because, in an era discovering “partial multiplayer”, in the case of Dark Souls, WD2 really refined that formula, even if it didn’t quite nail the rest the way people wanted. You would be randomly driving around and get an option to disrupt or assist someone else’s singleplayer game, without any loading screens.
I also admit I enjoy the way they promote stealth by making it the main way to keep things nonlethal, and stop bullets from flying. The series has an interesting bit of guidance against violent escalation; don’t escalate to guns against bad guys, and they likely won’t do the same to you. And thanks to all the hacker tools, an enemy that brings heavy artillery and turrets to a fist fight may find themselves facing their own weapons.
I had a blast with WD2. It was just fun. Unlike the first game, if wasn’t taking itself too seriously and it came out at a time where Ubi was still sorta developing what would become their open world formula, so it still felt fresher than similar titles do now.
I loved WD2, and I purposefully never bought/got the lethal weapons if I could help it. You probably get a couple as a matter of course in the game (I don’t remember), but I always just used the stun gun or melee - though hitting someone with an 8-ball on a rope is probably going to do some damage.
I don’t think any game since has made it as fun to pilot a little drones like this game. I loved being able to casually sit outside and sneak into places with the drones.
Forspoken has one of the best battle and movement gameplay systems in gaming, or at the very least in the “power fantasy sandbox” genre. Its story and dialogue are also a very cute, earnest take on Isekai that didn’t deserve the backlash they got. It has its flaws but it’s absolutely nowhere close to being the utter cringe-fest and terrible game that people like Asmongold successfully convinced the rest of the internet it was (because it has a female POC protagonist, basically). Personally, as someone who wanted to live the ultimate elemental wizard power-fantasy in a game since I was a child, Forspoken gave me everything I wanted and more (like cats! Lots of adorable cats).
Yeah, Forspoken has been on my list since I saw some high level gameplay and someone saying the traversal was like having inFamous with more lateral speed.
The main issue, to me (based on videos), was how empty the world was.
Seems like they had great gameplay, but at some point it doesn’t matter when you’ve got nowhere interesting to go and you’re fighting the same enemies over and over
But yeah, I agree with the unnecessary backlash. Just reeks of right wing gamer gate chuds.
Suddenly they were super worried about good dialogue in video games, and I’m sure it had nothing to do with the color or gender of the MC.
Everyone is just saying actually popular games, but ones they don’t think are popular enough. If people don’t have to look up the game, it’s probably not answering this question (with a few infamous exceptions maybe).
Mine would be Stationeers. There’s no real action or anything. It’s a game about designing, building, managing, and automating a station on another world. Each world has its own issues, be that Luna with a vacuum, Mars (the easiest) with storms, no breathable atmosphere, and cold, Venus with all the Venus issues, or some made up planets with crazy problems. It simulated gasses and liquids, replicating the refrigeration cycle so you can make your own heat pumps for cooling. It’s really cool, but complex and potentially boring for most people.
It’s made by the studio making Kitten Space Agency. It’s a studio created by the DayZ mod creator, and they seem really cool. They’re very much not profit motivated, and I think they’ve said developing Stationeers is costing them money, at least at one point, and KSA is planned to be free and donation supported.
That sounds kinda awesome, I’m gonna have to look into Stationeers.
It has probably the highest learning cliff of any game, but there are also guides for everything. At the higher level, once you’re surviving, you’ll hopefully be programming stuff too. That’s all done in Assembly, so ideally you’ll have experience with that, but it’s not that hard to learn for doing basic programs. If you need any help, let me know!
Watch Dogs, the first one specifically. I know Ubisoft has had a pretty bad track record, especially in recent years, but I’ve played through that game a bunch of times and always had a good time with it. Even in its worse parts its still dumb fun.
The story honestly aged really well too for better or worse with how tech companies and governments are mingling now.
Saints Row IV - I liked aspects of the earlier games, but I actually really enjoyed the meta silliness of IV. I accept that I don’t have a lot of company in having this opinion 🙂
EDIT: I guess I was wrong! I swear every time I’ve seen SRIV mentioned, I’ve seen tons of hate directed at it. Glad to see there are a bunch of us! Dozens even 😄
For a long time, SRIV was probably the best superhero game around.
I’m a bit late to the party but dude! It’s like one of my all time favorite games. It’s unapologetically aware of how ridiculous it is, my favorite parts are the dialogues in the Enter the Dominatrix DLC. JB Blanc as Zyniak is one of the best over the top villain in video games IMHO, you can just hear he and the whole cast were having so much fun.
I LOVE Saints Row IV! It’s my favorite of the entire franchise. Yes, it’s extra campy and over-the-top, but that just makes it more enjoyable.
Probably my favorite mission of Saints Row III was where you took an experimental drug and it gave you super-speed for a little while, so you could sprint across the city faster than if you were driving a car.
Saints Row IV just gives that to you as a permanent upgrade at some point. You don’t need cars later in the game, you can just run ridiculously fast and leap skyscrapers in a single bound.
I can’t remember if you can fly too, but I wanna say you can. It’s been quite a long time since I played that game.
I had so much fun in Saints Row IV, most of my playtime is just running all over the map and dicking around with NPCs once I was too OP for them to do anything to me. It’s hard for me to go back to the other games after that.
Underneath the silliness, SR4 had a good story and great performances. I remember tearing up a bit during the car segment of the final mission.
It is one of the few open-world sidequestapaloozas I have ever beaten because the story and insanity kept me coming back.
Legitimately, SR4 was my introduction to the series and I absolutely adored the shit out of it.
If you haven’t checked it out yet - The Gat Out of Hell expansion had a very similar super-powered play-style.
I liked and finished Unlimited SaGa twice. The soundtrack is phenominal and the graphics are all hand-painted watercolors. The combat system is a bit opaque but with tinkering, can be figured out.
And yet, it’s regarded as one of the worst titles on the PkayStation 2.
I still use the track “DG mixture” when I need a consistent sound to set my soundboard for my shows.
I enjoyed Zelda Skyward Sword upon release, despite having to get the new controller that supporter more motion on the Wii for it. The dungeon on the ship in the desert that involved time travel was a standout level and i really enjoyed it at the time. Granted I haven’t played it in 10 years, it’s a good game. I am glad though that the backlash resulted in Breath of the Wild, and without Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild would have never happened.
Riding in that boat in the desert and being in that “time bubble” where there was only water around you is still one of the coolest things Zelda has done, I think. And the music in that spot was very good.
Of all the things in that game, I remember that area the most.
Star Fox Zero. Sure, the story was a repeat of old game, but the gameplay was not. The controls needed more polish, but ultimately I thought the gameplay was great. I actually didn’t mind the motion controls. Most of what people complained about didn’t bother me or felt overblown.
I don’t want to go back into the depths of time to try to remember an obscure game I played decades ago. So I’ll do a recent one that people didn’t necessarily hate, but didn’t like as much as its predecessor and were pretty open about it.
Doom: The Dark Ages
I ended up liking it more than Eternal. It wasn’t as fast paced, even though it was still fast, but you could FEEL the combat more in Dark Ages. The devs made the movement and hits FEEL more substantial. I was skeptical about the shield, but ended up loving it. Chaining together the shield attack, melee attack, and gunplay felt great. I liked the levels more than Eternal too. And they added a lot of lore to deepen the Doom universe. Main story was whatever, but that’s typical for the Doom franchise.
Whether deserved or not Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy is always forgotten compared to its predecessor. But I don’t care, it’s the best one for me.
In the same vein The Force Unleashed II is the one I remember more fondly. It’s worse than the previous one certainly, but the story does have some nice moments and playing it on the hardest difficulty makes you actually have to block correctly and plan your movement right to survive the onslaught of fire by the stormtroopers.
Ohhh my god I played so much jka in 2005-6. It is the best sword fighting mechanics ever imo
I was a fan of No Man’s Sky on release. It played a lot like a 3D version of Out There, which was a game that I liked, so I found it fun.
i love starfield, despite its flaws. the public opinion was very… 😬
Starfield is one of the best frameworks for a game I have ever played, I just really really wish they had remembered to put an actual game inside it
I saw that the modding community is working REALLY hard to turn it into a Star Wars game. There are all kinds of mods for visuals and graphics. Just need to match the audio and text to the renamed planets because it gets very confusing
I wish there was equal fervor for Firefly, which I think fits the tone and aesthetic of the universe much better
I have been meaning to go back and give it another chance. I played it on launch and got to some place like 30 minutes in that they clearly wanted to be some big “ooo, ahh” moment but I just felt bored. I shut it off and never played again. I do enjoy Bethesda games though so it’s possible I would like it if I pushed through.
if you treat more of a meditative exploration rather than dungeon crawler (like skyrim or fallout excelled at) you may like it
I really enjoyed my first playthrough. Never felt the need to play again, but I got a solid 65 ish hours in and enjoyed it the whole time. I haven’t played it for a while now, maybe I should do another playthrough.
Same! Played around 500 hours when ut first released. Haven’t played any of the DLC, definitely replaying from scratch with those sometime soon.
Final Fantasy 8
It was unforgettable the way it released but it would’ve been even better if the devs had more time to complete the whole story. We didn’t get enough of Laguna because of it.
I thought 8 was good. It came out at a time in my life when grinding for spells to boost stats wasn’t offensive to me.
Never went back and replayed it. It’s in the uncanny valley of instead of using blobby, well designed yet simple graphics it was trying to look good realistically but not quite nailing it, and the controls are clunky.
Wouldn’t say I loved it but it came after 7 and I mean, huge shoes to fill. But I did NOT like 9 at all so I still remember it as good, all things considered.
It’s my favourite one actually.
I cant think of any. Im typically the person that hates games that most people like.
Oni.
In my most unpopular opinion, the only good thing Bungie ever made. Way more satisfying than console-friendly auto-aim shooting aliens without gore.
Oni has some great sci-fi details, even when missing a deep overarching story. And breaking people’s necks with a cool 360 swing with proper sound effects of the neck bones being chipped is sooo satisfying. And that was an unfinished project by the way: you can notice there was no environment work done.
