Your video game hot take(s) thread

Chimpzy

Simian Abomination
Legacy
Escapist +
Apr 3, 2020
12,190
8,435
118
  • A game that needs mods to be good, is not a good game. Looking at you, Bethesda.
  • I don't think any of the 3d Zelda are very good. Save maybe BotW, but only because I haven't played it.
  • Gears of War always has been and still is a solid and fun shooter franchise.
  • As a rail-shooter, Panzer Dragoon is a far better series than Star Fox.

Jrpgs are underserving of being attributed to what constitutes a roleplaying game
But then, if you've ever played an actual roleplaying game, no video game rpg actually lives up to the name roleplaying.
 

hanselthecaretaker

My flask is half full
Legacy
Nov 18, 2010
8,738
5,905
118
Graphics hit their plateau in the ps3 era and now it is more important to have art styles and lore-related-visuals than just raw power in your systems/games/so on and so forth. You can still work for frame rate-stuff and improve lighting and how many chars you can depict simultaneously on screen but just on a pure aesthetic approach it is more important to implement unique artwork and creativity than to seek photorealism or any kind of realistic graphics.

You sure 'bout that one?

EaReGSrWkAAEx0u.jpgEaReHYnWAAAQqTw.jpg

Pretty sure the first one is emulated too.


Anyways I'll continue on topic,

While I still love game (and the series by extension), the Witcher 3 suffers from bloated game design, and outdated RPG mechanics. I shouldn't have to spend nearly five extra minutes fighting the same mooks just because they have a red skull icon above their heads when I killed them in five seconds at my level. Sadly, it sounds like Cyberpunk: 2077 is pretty much the same deal, but at least the starting from scratch as a character makes sense in that game.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: BrawlMan

XsjadoBlayde

~it ends here~
Apr 29, 2020
3,216
3,354
118
All yous amateurs are casting your nets too thinly here. Why aim for a couple of fish when you can nab the whole school? (Ergh, iffy wording primed for an out-of-context misquote there!)

All videogames are shite, and anyone playing them is a filthy degenerate, up to and including me ruffled woodland self! Apart from Hades and other Supergiant lovelies.
Anita was right all along.

*Takes back door emergency exit*
 

Catfood220

Elite Member
Legacy
Dec 21, 2010
2,098
357
88
I take it you don't have a Wii. My GameCube still works fine. It's not plugged in currently but I always clean it out and I keep it wrapped in plastic and bubble wrap and put it in its own box.
I do own a Wii, in fact I've owned two. But after getting fed with my first and trading it in for s shiny new PS3, I sold most of my Gamecube titles. Then I bought a second Wii when Skyward Sword came out. Of course, Skyward Sword wasn't that good and I soon remembered why I traded in my first Wii in in the first place:)
 

BrawlMan

Lover of beat'em ups.
Legacy
Mar 10, 2016
26,690
11,192
118
Detroit, Michigan
Country
United States of America
Gender
Male
The weebs hate Sony's "censorship" of all their "and then we strip the clothes off the schoolgirls" games
Which is why they are loving Steam or Nintendo Switch every second.

- The Wonderful 101 is just... really bad.
P-P-P-P-Preposterous! Preposterous I say!

..................................................................

Okay I don't consider it bad, but it can be underwhelming with all of the gimmicks Hideki Kamiya keeps throwing at you. It's always been a problem whenever he directs a game. He makes stages or sections with weird gimmicks that are either not fun, outstay their welcome, or both. I did like the horizontal SHMUP section in Viewtiful Joe 1. W101 does not help it's case as a lot of the time because you're just thrown in there and expected to figure it out on your first playthrough.

As a rail-shooter, Panzer Dragoon is a far better series than Star Fox.
So much yes!


  • I hate to say it, but superhero games based off a Marvel/DC are in a worse position they were back then. Hear me out. As much problem as there were with many licensed games, there were good ones out there made by different studios. Disney buying up everything, Fox included now, mean less creative freedom is involved. The same applies to WB since they bought out DC. Sure you have your Batman and Spider-Man, but the publishers, developers, and gamers should be striving for more. As much as I love Spider-Man, you will most likely never see another Spider-Man game another console, except maybe Spider-Verse. In order to play the current games, you have to own a Sony console. Crossover games don't count as I am talking about solo titles. Remember when Spider-Man and X-Men games were on more than one console or not held to one single entity? When is there going to be an Iron Fist game, another Blade game, or solo Hulk game? How about a new Aquaman game? Do you know the full potential that has yet to be tapped? We don't need games like Marvel's Anthem Avengers and more unique and way less intrusive microtranscations?
 
Last edited:

BrawlMan

Lover of beat'em ups.
Legacy
Mar 10, 2016
26,690
11,192
118
Detroit, Michigan
Country
United States of America
Gender
Male
I do own a Wii, in fact I've owned two. But after getting fed with my first and trading it in for s shiny new PS3, I sold most of my Gamecube titles. Then I bought a second Wii when Skyward Sword came out. Of course, Skyward Sword wasn't that good and I soon remembered why I traded in my first Wii in in the first place:)
I get it, but at least you are still able to play GC games on it, unless you got the Wii console that does not play GC games nor use GC memory cards.
It's why I kept both for a reason.
 

hanselthecaretaker

My flask is half full
Legacy
Nov 18, 2010
8,738
5,905
118
People laugh at the Cell processor but it was still stronger than even more recent 9th gen i7’s at specific tasks. The problem is it was a ***** to develop for and was bottlenecked by a split RAM system and weaker GPU.



It’s why for example the PS3 is still a vastly superior Blu-ray player than its successor. The audio decoding ability of the PS3 alone is a night and day difference.
 

Phoenixmgs

The Muse of Fate
Legacy
Apr 3, 2020
8,925
784
118
w/ M'Kraan Crystal
Gender
Male
All my hot takes have been ninja'd so... quotathon!!!

---

-Mirror's Edge isn't some underappreciated masterpiece - its gameplay is lacking, and its storytelling is terrible
It's not a masterpiece but...


Red Dead Redemption 2 has an amazing game world, great writing and characters, and is an absolute fucking slog to play. I have never had less fun with a game.
I couldn't get through playing RDR1 (got to Mexico), the gunplay was so freaking boring and simplistic.

Jrpgs are underserving of being attributed to what constitutes a roleplaying game
So very much THIS a million times. People don't understand what RPGs are anymore and they confuse them with gameplay systems/mechanics that have nothing to with actually being an RPG. Guess what, RPGs don't even need a leveling system or classes or progression of any kind (there's tons of one-shot PnP RPGs out there). Or you can play as say a master (of anything) and thus be at max progression at the start of the game or start at master status and actually lose skills over time to aging. Why isn't there an RPG about that, choosing what skills you lose as the character ages vs choosing what skills you gain?
 

Phoenixmgs

The Muse of Fate
Legacy
Apr 3, 2020
8,925
784
118
w/ M'Kraan Crystal
Gender
Male
-The Souls games in general both benefit and suffer from how the lore and game mechanics tie together. The fog gates made perfect sense in Demons Souls and then they just kept on using them because for every game after that regardless of not having any real justification. The poison swamps were justified in Blighttown and Valley of defilement because that's where all the literal shit was ending up but somewhere along the way FROM decided any standing water of notable amount had to be POISON for reasons. Also, why some die for reals and some go hollow and some go hollow and then disappear when killed is never explained anywhere, it's just kinda there for gameplay reasons.
Couldn't agree more, From uses the same game design over and over again, even in new IPs like Bloodborne and Sekiro.

I'm more interested by the fact Disco Elysium is getting new content then Cyberpunk 2077 dropping.
OMG, YES YES YES!!!

Rockstar's level of staleness and lack of innovation makes Ubisofts open world games seem like pioneering masterpeices in comparison.
So much this. I really don't even understand how people can play Rockstar games and not get massively bored. Pandemic's Mercenaries on PS2/Xbox vastly outclassed Rockstar's "breakthrough" 3D GTAs in the very same generation. Rockstar has yet to make an open world game that has even outclassed Mercenaries.

Graphics hit their plateau in the ps3 era and now it is more important to have art styles and lore-related-visuals than just raw power in your systems/games/so on and so forth. You can still work for frame rate-stuff and improve lighting and how many chars you can depict simultaneously on screen but just on a pure aesthetic approach it is more important to implement unique artwork and creativity than to seek photorealism or any kind of realistic graphics.
Use the extra hardware power for stuff that's hard to do like AI instead just increasing polys.

- None of the Souls games have good action (this includes Sekiro), because of the abysmal camera and lock-on. Bloodborne has probably the worst non-committal action-RPG mechanics I've ever experienced.
Lock-on became antiquated 2 3 generations ago on PS2.
 

Phoenixmgs

The Muse of Fate
Legacy
Apr 3, 2020
8,925
784
118
w/ M'Kraan Crystal
Gender
Male
But then, if you've ever played an actual roleplaying game, no video game rpg actually lives up to the name roleplaying.
Mass Effect series, you spend more time role-playing than anything else in the series. Also, this old Escapist podcast (starting at basically 6:30 and going for 10-15 minutes) perfectly encapsulates what an RPG is to me and how video game RPGs made them a mechanics-based genre when RPGs literally don't have single required mechanic to be an RPG. Disco Elysium as well of course. Divinity OS series has some decent RPing in them. I've heard Fallout New Vegas (never played), Alpha Protocol (never played), and Wasteland 3 (just started playing) have solid RPing in them. Gamedec is very much going to be a cyberpunk RPG unlike Cyberpunk. Devs are lazy and prefer to do the easy stuff like making combat the main gameplay of an RPG or putting in progression systems (what games no matter then genre don't have these now?) because combat is easy to do whereas giving the player real agency with story/dialogue choices and the world reacting to your decision is hard.

Rpg video games are too obsessed with classes, levels and other stats, often to the detriment of the actual roleplaying.
I read this after typing the above part out...
 

Dirty Hipsters

This is how we praise the sun!
Legacy
Feb 7, 2011
7,885
2,235
118
Country
'Merica
Gender
3 children in a trench coat
I couldn't get through playing RDR1 (got to Mexico), the gunplay was so freaking boring and simplistic.
Here's the thing, I actually liked Red Dead Redemption 1 well enough. I finished the whole game, and played the DLC.

Red Dead Redemption 2 on the other hand took everything that was annoying about Red Dead Redemption 1 and turned it up in favor of "realism" which is stupid.

Rockstar just decided "quality of life is for idiots, fuck them."

Like for example, if you want to craft bullets you have to sit there and manually craft every individual bullet in real time. It's fucking awful and the best way to make sure I never use any of the special bullets.

The combat is feels bad, movement feels bad, riding your horse feels bad. The bounty system is annoying and doesn't make any sense and the UI is absolutely awful. Every part of the actual game part is subpar.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Phoenixmgs

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
Legacy
Jul 18, 2009
19,570
4,374
118
Lock-on became antiquated 2 3 generations ago on PS2.
Lock-on can still serve its purpose, but when you put it in an action game that punishes you quite strongly for making a mistake, put the input on R3, and make the distance at which it activates and remain active limited and hard to judge, then it sucks donkey balls.
Here's the thing, I actually liked Red Dead Redemption 1 well enough. I finished the whole game, and played the DLC.

Red Dead Redemption 2 on the other hand took everything that was annoying about Red Dead Redemption 1 and turned it up in favor of "realism" which is stupid.

Rockstar just decided "quality of life is for idiots, fuck them."

Like for example, if you wan to craft bullets you have to sit there and manually craft every individual bullet in real time. It's fucking awful and the best way to make sure I never use any of the special bullets.

The combat is feels bad, movement feels bad, riding your horse feels bad. The bounty system is annoying and doesn't make any sense and the UI is absolutely awful. Every part of the actual game part is subpar.
I actually replayed again recently - trying to give it second change 'n all that - and I found if I approached it purely as a sim I got some enjoyment out of just riding around nature, turning off the mini-map and letting the environment guide me, and just taking it slow while I discover my surroundings. So basically not approaching it as an actual videogame, because the game hates you for doing that. I got about as far as the third chapter when I realized this was as good as it was going to get.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Dalisclock

Gergar12

Elite Member
Legacy
Apr 24, 2020
3,275
794
118
Country
United States
GOT/Ghost needed better combat with different weapon types.
 

Dalisclock

Making lemons combustible again
Legacy
Escapist +
Feb 9, 2008
11,228
7,007
118
A Barrel In the Marketplace
Country
Eagleland
Gender
Male
Couldn't agree more, From uses the same game design over and over again, even in new IPs like Bloodborne and Sekiro.
On a related note, to add to my first take, FROM's lack of any kind of movement besides "run, roll and hit things" feels extremely arbitrary(though Sekiro allowing you to grab ledges and swim feels like they kinda understand this....finally). The fact there are numerous places in the series where a chest high wall is an insurmountable barrier because your character can't seem to figure out how to get past it(Dark Souls 2 is really bad about this). Even the Team ICO games, which feel kin to souls games in their presentation, have basic traversal like swimming and the ability to clamer over a ledge which make FROM games feel lazy in comparison.

And of course, the fact SOULS game occasionally want you to make simple jumps to reach things but since there's no dedicated jump button, there's a decent chance you'll mess it up and fall to your death for this reason and no other. Sekiro having an actual fucking jump button feels like "What took you so long, FROM?" They want to put platforming in but don't want to adapt the controls to compensate.

Hell, Mario mastered the jump button in the 1980's.FROM taking till 2019 to figure this out feels unacceptable.
 
Last edited:

BrawlMan

Lover of beat'em ups.
Legacy
Mar 10, 2016
26,690
11,192
118
Detroit, Michigan
Country
United States of America
Gender
Male
GOT/Ghost needed better combat with different weapon types.
Agreed to an extent. They will fix that in the sequel. At least Ghost had multiple stances you could switch between on the fly. Sucker Punch better not make the same mistake where they lock stances behind observing or killing camp/enemy generals. That was stupid and senseless padding.

  • The Sega Genesis Mini, Turbo Grafx Mini, and Neo Geo Mini are a 1000x's better than the NES & SNES mini. While the former three have their various duds in the compilations, at least you get more than enough variety of games. The NES & SNES you only get 20 games respectively, and the console compilation is way more expensive due to Nintendo stopping production and scalpers. Even at their original price points, they were way too expensive.
  • Bayonetta 2 is a much better game than Bayonetta. The sequel gets rid of the bad QTEs, a more pleasing color palette that is not washed out, and better pacing. The story is simple and not as convoluted as the first game. The game has even better bonuses that easier to unlock and are not tedious nor obtuse unlike Bayo1.
 

Dalisclock

Making lemons combustible again
Legacy
Escapist +
Feb 9, 2008
11,228
7,007
118
A Barrel In the Marketplace
Country
Eagleland
Gender
Male
I actually replayed again recently - trying to give it second change 'n all that - and I found if I approached it purely as a sim I got some enjoyment out of just riding around nature, turning off the mini-map and letting the environment guide me, and just taking it slow while I discover my surroundings. So basically not approaching it as an actual videogame, because the game hates you for doing that. I got about as far as the third chapter when I realized this was as good as it was going to get.
Same. I went into RDR2 with a "take your time and enjoy the world" mindset and enjoyed the hell out of it for that reason. I also enjoyed the characters a lot, which is great since the plot is basically "Dutch tries for big score, brings the heat down, repeat until everyone is dead or has fled out of a sense of self preservation".

Also TAHITI MANGOS WE NEED MORE FUCKING MONEY ARTHUR!