Your video game hot take(s) thread

[BrawlMan]

Grasshopper Studios have some of the most unique and best looking UI/HUDs in their games. Say what you will about all their titles' qualities, but GS own their looks and never followed heavy trends of the status quo when it came to their menu designs.

Shadows of the Damned is one of the better looking Unreal Engine 3 games. Not the best looking, but it would go into my top 5 for its use of color theory. There's lots of greens, reds, and blues. The way hell is lit up reminds me of Doom (PSX/PS1) and Doom 64 with the way the latter two uses their color, and beautifully dark atmosphere.

The soundtrack hits hard, is the best kind of vibes you're not expecting, and is criminally underrated. Lots of atmospheric music/noises, blues, jazz, blue grass, and even some lo-fi hip hop rhythm going on in certain sections. Akira Yamaoka is talented as fuck, and I wish more people talked about the soundtrack to Shadows of Damned. Because the OST is right up there with the Team Silent Silent Hill games. About as great as Silent Hill 2/Silent Hill 2 Remake.

 

[Drathnoxis]

• Lords of Shadow 2
• Darksiders I-III
• Suicide Squad
• Avengers
• Godfall
• Sonic Froniters - Due to the mini games and side quests being required to do to advance the story.
• Breath of the Wild & ToK.
• Symphony of the Night when it gets to the inverted castle.
• Dino Crisis
• Resident Evil 6
• Spider-Man 2 (2022)
• Doom Eternal Whenever the shitty platforming is involved. It's why I never finished it.
• TLOUS2
• Alien Isolation
• Callisto Protocol

What the heck was wrong with the pacing of BotW? There's like a 20 second cutscene and then you're straight into gameplay and after an hour of freeform tutorial the pacing is entirely at your own discretion.

 

[Worgen]

What the heck was wrong with the pacing of BotW? There's like a 20 second cutscene and then you're straight into gameplay and after an hour of freeform tutorial the pacing is entirely at your own discretion.

A better question is whats wrong with the pacing of the Darksiders games.

 

[BrawlMan]

What the heck was wrong with the pacing of BotW? There's like a 20 second cutscene and then you're straight into gameplay and after an hour of freeform tutorial the pacing is entirely at your own discretion.

They're not that bad, but it just didn't gel with me.

A better question is whats wrong with the pacing of the Darksiders games.

The pacing in these games are horrible. Especially in Darksiders II. They suffer huge padding issues to stretch out the game to justify the price of $60. I can't remember everything, but it's around 1/2 way mark is where I lose my interests. Darksiders II just fucking drags the worst. 3 bad bosses and one of them is a reskinned bosses in one of later dungeons, traveling between specific dungeons are just empty space and have no interesting environments, and some of those later dungeons have really shitty puzzles. Whitelight sums it up in this time stamp:

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Darksiders III is better about this from what I hear, but it depends on which version of the game you're playing. The original where it plays more like Dark Souls, or the optional update where it's more in line of the first two games. From what I remember, most fans prefer the updated version.

 

[Ezekiel]

Gravity Rush is the best 3D superhero game. Sequel's mediocre.

 

[BrawlMan]

Sequel's mediocre.

That second sentence is really not a hot take. Most people will agree with you.

 

[Ezekiel]

That second sentence is really not a hot take. Most people will agree with you.

Yes, but I have to say that every time for people who might only have played the sequel. "Gravity Rush (2) sucked. Why is he so confidently saying it's the best 3D superhero game?"

 

[BrawlMan]

Yes, but I have to say that every time for people who might only have played the sequel. "Gravity Rush (2) sucked. Why is he so confidently saying it's the best 3D superhero game?"

You're not gonna find that many people on here that would bother to even disagree with you. There's barely anybody left here that doesn't even care. Spacebattles more than likely will have the large amount of people you are looking for, but I will confidently tell you that most of those people will still agree with you. On either their unpopular opinions thread or controversial gaming thread.

 

[Gergar12]

Unironically fuck Sony.

 

[BrawlMan]

Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered proves remasters are not all bad nor the "ultimate sin" of gaming. With this remaster, there is no reason to go back and play the original. The original version runs at 30fps (the Switch version does too, but it's way more stable), has unskippable cut-scenes, no NG+ and somewhat lengthy loading times. Not to mention, you can't even get the original on digital stores because Microsoft shutdown the 360 store, and the Sony PS3 store is not that far behind. Trying to find a copy of the 7th generation is not worth it either, even if you can find it cheap. If this remaster didn't happen, the game would have been stuck on 7th gen consoles.

SotD: HR is even available on PC now. So now people who never heard of the game, can play it on all modern platforms. I already got a few of my friends interested in playing the game, and they have the console(s) available to get the game. It's ironic that this game, Bullestorm, and Vanquish made it further to 8th and current gen consoles, than nearly any of the brown shooters from yesteryear. With almost all of the brown and grey shooter being forgotten about and stuck in the past.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Before you call for the removal of weapon durability as a mechanic from every game that uses it, reflect you a moment on the words of G.K. Chesterton:

"The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, 'I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away.' To which the more intelligent type of reformer would do well to answer, 'If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.'"

Obviously I'm not saying that it's necessarily a good mechanic, so don't even come at me with that. What I am saying is that if you try to just remove it from games that have it, without considering how that would affect the game's balance, you won't strictly come out with a better game.

 

[BrawlMan]

What I am saying is that if you try to just remove it from games that have it, without considering how that would affect the game's balance, you won't strictly come out with a better game.

True, but that boils down to some games do it better than most of them that try it. It all goes back to Sturgeon's Law. I don't care much for weapon durability in most games, nor interested in the ones that do get it right.

With Marian being upgraded to action girl in three games now (all from different Double Dragon continuities), there is no reason to make her a damsel in distress anymore. Before anyone starts: I know about the Double Dragon (Neo Geo) fighting game, where Marian is playable, but that was 20 years ago, and loosely based off the poor movie adaption.

 

[BrawlMan]

Some people see Double Dragon 1's (NES) lack of co-op as net negative, but with so many ports that you can play on handheld (be they official or emulated portable devices), it gives the game that solo campaign some extra edge. DD1 (NES) is a pretty good solo adventure while traveling or just killing 25-30 minutes of your time. There are still better Double Dragon games, but you can't go wrong with this version every now and then. It does control better than the arcade version, despite its limitations. With Double Dragon Advance being a thing for a long time, there is not much reason to play the original arcade counterparts because of their sluggish controls.

 

[Gordon_4]

Before you call for the removal of weapon durability as a mechanic from every game that uses it, reflect you a moment on the words of G.K. Chesterton:

"The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, 'I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away.' To which the more intelligent type of reformer would do well to answer, 'If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.'"

Obviously I'm not saying that it's necessarily a good mechanic, so don't even come at me with that. What I am saying is that if you try to just remove it from games that have it, without considering how that would affect the game's balance, you won't strictly come out with a better game.

Well it depends on what the consequences of exceeding that durability limit are. In WoW for example it’s entirely possible for me to his maximum durability loss on all my weapons and armour and be unable to fight. But I don’t lose the items. I just pay at the appropriate vendor to have it repaired and it’s back like magic. But aside from making a couple of profession items obsolete and removing a gold sink, the removal of it from WoW would not greatly, if at all, impact the overall balance as far as I can determine.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Before you call for the removal of weapon durability as a mechanic from every game that uses it, reflect you a moment on the words of G.K. Chesterton:

"The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, 'I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away.' To which the more intelligent type of reformer would do well to answer, 'If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.'"

Obviously I'm not saying that it's necessarily a good mechanic, so don't even come at me with that. What I am saying is that if you try to just remove it from games that have it, without considering how that would affect the game's balance, you won't strictly come out with a better game.

Weapon durability in the souls games is entirely pointless. The weapons have so much durability that it's basically impossible for a weapon to break in between bonfires, and the repair costs on weapons tend to be so minor that they may as well not matter to the overall economy of the game. The only thing weapon durability does is punish you for forgetting that it exists.

Weapon durability is has only ever been a challenge in Dark Souls 2, and only because the durability was bugged (the amount of durability reduction on a weapon depended on how many frames it took that weapon to pass through an enemy, so if you were playing on PC with an unlocked framerate your weapons degraded between 2x and 5x faster).

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Weapon durability in the souls games is entirely pointless. The weapons have so much durability that it's basically impossible for a weapon to break in between bonfires, and the repair costs on weapons tend to be so minor that they may as well not matter to the overall economy of the game. The only thing weapon durability does is punish you for forgetting that it exists.

Weapon durability is has only ever been a challenge in Dark Souls 2, and only because the durability was bugged (the amount of durability reduction on a weapon depended on how many frames it took that weapon to pass through an enemy, so if you were playing on PC with an unlocked framerate your weapons degraded between 2x and 5x faster).

I know that. And I already said I'm not saying that it's necessarily a good mechanic. My point is, if you're going to remove it from a game/series that has it, you need to consider any knock-on effects of doing so, and how that might negatively affect your game. If there aren't any, great; if there are and you ignore them, or try to compensate for the removal but do it badly, you get a game like Fire Emblem Fates, where they tried to give certain weapons different negative effects to counterbalance them no longer breaking from overuse, but totally failed to balance them properly and ended up breaking the game completely. If you could use Crystal weapons in DS1 without them breaking, you'd practically never use anything else outside niche builds, right? Which might be why they were taken out of the subsequent games with the durability rework in 2, and abandoning it entirely in 3.

Though while we're on the subject of Dark Souls 2, there is Santier's Spear, which has 350 durability (where no other weapon has more than 100), and when broken permanently transforms into a significantly better version. Sure, it's a gimmick, but it's one that could only exist in that environment.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Unrelated to above, to everyone who complains about yellow paint in Resident Evil 4 Remake, but has never said a word about blue lights in Dead Space Remake:

Y'all fake. You don't really care about telegraphing or an excess of it, you just want to throw shade on RE4R.

 

[BrawlMan]

Unrelated to above, to everyone who complains about yellow paint in Resident Evil 4 Remake, but has never said a word about blue lights in Dead Space Remake:

Y'all fake. You don't really care about telegraphing or an excess of it, you just want to throw shade on RE4R.

We can do even better. These same fools never really complained about telegraphing in seventh generation games. Shadows of the dand uses bright yellow rings or highlighted items with white and gold. None of them complained about telegraphing in DmC 2013. Other than hardcore classic fans, but critics praised the telegraphing of red and blue. They still do. No one complained about the use of yellow telegraphing in Hi-Fi Rush. The game does use more than yellow, but yellow is still a predominant use of going to the next area.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Though while we're on the subject of Dark Souls 2, there is Santier's Spear, which has 350 durability (where no other weapon has more than 100), and when broken permanently transforms into a significantly better version. Sure, it's a gimmick, but it's one that could only exist in that environment.

Not really. You could have the same kind of transforming weapon that transforms once it's killed a certain number of enemies. Say that it consumes the blood of its enemies or something. Literally the same mechanic just presented slightly differently.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Not really. You could have the same kind of transforming weapon that transforms once it's killed a certain number of enemies. Say that it consumes the blood of its enemies or something. Literally the same mechanic just presented slightly differently.

That's hardly a secret method. Killing a bunch of enemies is a thing you'd do anyway. Intentionally breaking your weapon is something you actually have to figure out.