Your video game hot take(s) thread

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Johnny Novgorod

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I was just thinking how boring character design was in Norse era GoW. We went from the delightfully twisted and expressive heavy metal grotesqueries of God of War 1 & 2 to fighting a biker gang. Clotho alone holds more personality in any one of her saggy, silk-spewing udders than all of the Norse monsters combined.

And any of the introductory set-pieces to the Greek era games is more exciting than Ragnarok's tepid version of Ragnarok.
 
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BrawlMan

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And any of the introductory set-pieces to the Greek era games is more exciting than Ragnarok's tepid version of Ragnarok.
Meh. Some better than others, but sounds more like personal preference (nothing wrong with that) than any "superiority" or more exciting. Also, God of War III is pretty much a slog for me. I've gotten more excitement from Dante's Inferno than GoWIII.
 
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The only thing in Norse GoW that tickled that *larger than life epic boss battle* feel was that one dragon from 2018. Even the zombie giant thing at the end felt like more of a backdrop, and the world serpent was basically the series’ largest NPC.
 
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BrawlMan

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The worst offender of "this game just never shuts up" ever produced is Sonic Heroes.
At least Heroes has some good one liners. I would still give it to Forspoken.

I have a feeling Dead As Disco and Tenet of the Spark will be better than SIFU.
 

NerfedFalcon

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At least Heroes has some good one liners. I would still give it to Forspoken.
The problem I have is that literally every time you come across a mechanic that requires you to switch to a specific character, the game puts up a floating TV next to it to tell you which character to switch to... and then has one character say a voice line to tell you which character to switch to. Every single time.

Admittedly, never played Forspoken myself, nor watched any videos on it because it's just not the kind of thing I was ever interested in.
 
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Ezekiel

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The "Snake Eater" credits montage is one of the worst parts of the game. The lyrics are very dumb and she was a bad singer. Also, in James Bond movies the song separates a distinct part of the movie. I mean the opening scene is distinct from what comes after the credits/song. So it's a shame that after the bad "Snake Eater" song, you make the same trip again but at night.
 

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Death Battle I never liked. I am glad they broke away from Screw Attack and Stuttering Craig, but their show is not good and way too repetitive.

I have a feeling Dead As Disco and Tenet of the Spark will be better than SIFU.
 

thebobmaster

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Death Battle I never liked. I am glad they broke away from Screw Attack and Stuttering Craig, but their show is not good and way too repetitive.

I have a feeling Dead As Disco and Tenet of the Spark will be better than SIFU.
Death Battle has always come off to me as fanboyism hiding being "well, ackshually statistics".
 
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NerfedFalcon

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Ok, how about High on Life, same developers, multiplatform, not VR, Yahtzee reviewed it.
Look, this thread asked for 'hot takes', not for reasonable justifications. I haven't played those games, I only know them by reputation if at all, but I do know Sonic Heroes better than I'd like, and it is absolutely insufferable. For a lot of reasons, but never shutting up is one of the bigger ones.
 
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Drathnoxis

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Look, this thread asked for 'hot takes', not for reasonable justifications. I haven't played those games, I only know them by reputation if at all, but I do know Sonic Heroes better than I'd like, and it is absolutely insufferable. For a lot of reasons, but never shutting up is one of the bigger ones.
Ok, I wasn't trying to grill you. I was just trying to see if we had a common frame of reference so I could understand how bad Sonic Heroes is.

I haven't played Accounting+ either, I've only watched SGF play through it, and I only played High on Life for about an hour. Accounting+ is pretty much just characters yelling at you nonstop for about an hour, the game.
 
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NerfedFalcon

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Ok, I wasn't trying to grill you. I was just trying to see if we had a common frame of reference so I could understand how bad Sonic Heroes is.
The thing about Sonic Heroes is that, unlike my impression of High on Life, it's not even saying different things every time it opens its mouth. Sure, sometimes it'll be contextual to the specific level you're in, but a lot of the time you'll just approach something, for instance a group of enemies, and because you aren't stupid even if you're six years old, you'll remember how you fought those enemies last time and switch to the most useful character. As you are doing that, Tails will suddenly cry out "This is all Knuckles!", the exact same line he has already said at least once a level up to this point. Even if you've already switched to Knuckles by the time you get to the voice line trigger.

As much as I understand that High on Life's comedy (or "comedy" depending who you ask) is at best not for everybody, at least it isn't telling you exactly what to do even though you already know, with the exact same line as you've already heard a lot of times before. And I do mean a lot of times, given that you have to play through 56 levels just to get a hint at how to unlock the true ending, and then probably play through the exact same levels several more times to try and obtain the Chaos Emeralds, so you can look forward to the game "helping" you even more until you just want to throw the game out a window.

It's a combination of the padding, the repetition, and the insistence on helping you even though you already know what you're doing that makes Sonic Heroes insufferable.

That and, as established, it just never, ever shuts up.
 
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Drathnoxis

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The thing about Sonic Heroes is that, unlike my impression of High on Life, it's not even saying different things every time it opens its mouth. Sure, sometimes it'll be contextual to the specific level you're in, but a lot of the time you'll just approach something, for instance a group of enemies, and because you aren't stupid even if you're six years old, you'll remember how you fought those enemies last time and switch to the most useful character. As you are doing that, Tails will suddenly cry out "This is all Knuckles!", the exact same line he has already said at least once a level up to this point. Even if you've already switched to Knuckles by the time you get to the voice line trigger.

As much as I understand that High on Life's comedy (or "comedy" depending who you ask) is at best not for everybody, at least it isn't telling you exactly what to do even though you already know, with the exact same line as you've already heard a lot of times before. And I do mean a lot of times, given that you have to play through 56 levels just to get a hint at how to unlock the true ending, and then probably play through the exact same levels several more times to try and obtain the Chaos Emeralds, so you can look forward to the game "helping" you even more until you just want to throw the game out a window.

It's a combination of the padding, the repetition, and the insistence on helping you even though you already know what you're doing that makes Sonic Heroes insufferable.

That and, as established, it just never, ever shuts up.
Ah, that does sound pretty bad. Kind of like Fi from Skyward Sword mixed with the pawns from Dragon's Dogma.
 

Ezekiel

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I miss good cutscenes. Cinematic storytelling became way worse when they all decided that it should be in-game as much as possible.

Metal Gear Solid trilogy may have had long cutscenes and codec conversations, but at least you were left alone in between. The run wasn't suddenly disabled and there wasn't all this sidling between walls and crap.

There's nothing impressive to me about the fake God of War being in a single camera shot, because it just limits the camerawork. It can never pull out far for scale. Boring moments can't be skipped with soft transitions by the director when there are no cut-scenes. So instead of the narrator moving things along, there's more walking and talking.

Instead of the First Light player moving James Bond as he walks and talks, they could just do a skippable cutscene of them walking and talking or sitting and talking, and the camerawork would be way more interesting than player control, which is just rotating a cam that's usually over the shoulder or too far away to emphasize gestures and expressions.
 

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Nonsensical rambling snd self entitled crying by Zekey Boy.

Hi-Fi Rush and Alan Wake 2 are the games that have the best cut-scene direction by far in this generation. Especially AW2. These two developers pull out all the stops for their respective games.