Poll: Ubisoft has never made a masterpiece

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

This entire thread and even your own post (which in itself is asserting a masterpiece that others obviously disagree with) would seem to contradict that logic.

That isn't a contradiction. I never said a masterpiece needed universal acclaim and that is a tired argument in every instance. No one says "every". PoP as I described, had near-universal acclaim and was a critical and commercial smash with popularity with gamers. It spawned a trilogy and I would argue set the direction of game design at Ubisoft to this day.

Even the list he did reply back with has some very questionable entries (GTA3 (a game rapidly discarded n favor of Vice City/San Andreas even by people who like GTA) and KotoR2 (literally unfinished) being the glaring ones).

Those are questionable. Maybe people are applying different standards, but those won't qualify. While GTA3 was absolutely a great game and unquestionably genre defining (giving rise to the term "GTA-like"), it had a lot of other shortcomings.

And KotoR2 was a perfect example of a game that is a "flawed gem". A flawed gem because it has a great game at its core but was let down by major issues that couldn't be overlooked. In KotOR2's case, rushed development to meet a tight deadline, too many bugs, unfinished sections and storylines meant the shipped product would always be remembered for the shortcomings, not the exceptional RPG with great story and characters at its core.

Other flawed gems include Alpha Protocol and most famously, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

But to respond overall, it's quite possible for someone to dislike the Sands of Time just as they could say the Mona Lisa or Last Supper aren't great paintings, the David statue is overrated or that Citizen Kane was a boring film. It doesn't matter if a handful of people don't like or acknowledge a thing, it is still a masterpiece.

The tragedy in the case of video games is that I think we are unlikely to see (m)any more because of what's happened to the industry since that "golden age" in the early naughties. Lootcrates, MTXs, F2P, grinding, filler content, uPlay, achievements/trophies, multiplayer campaigns, always-online, live service, DLC packs, Day 1 DLC, annual franchises, remakes/reboots and so on. All this crap that makes games worse, not better, interferes with and takes away from the core of a game. Compare AssCreed 2 with Odyssey to highlight the issue further, the latter of which clearly altered and padded to make microtransactions attractive.

 

[sXeth]

Compare AssCreed 2 with Odyssey to highlight the issue further, the latter of which clearly altered and padded to make microtransactions attractive.

Ass Creed 2 is a poor hill to die on while protesting DLC. Given the storyline has 1 giant time-skip to faciliate a DLC addon, and another giant time skip that you need to buy Brotherhood to actually have context for the finale of the game. Vanilla AC2 by itself has a giant trainwreck of a final chapter where characters show up without any context of WTF is going on, some never having even appeared in the game previously

Grindy junk (whether to push microtransactions or as more general Time=Content value fallacy) is at least somewhat a matter of personal taste. Hacking your stuff to pieces with gigantic and glaring gaps left behind is far far worse.

 

[Xprimentyl]

I gonna have to agree with B-Cell this time. I think Chaos Theory has enough stuff going on that could warrant it being called a masterpiece. Even though i remember the first Splinter Cell fondlier, i think "objectively" the third entry might be the pinnacle of the series.
I know Metal Gear likes to be held as example of THE best what stealth genre has to offer, and while i can't say it for myself, i know a guy whos super into stealth games and claims that when comes to mechanics, CT blows MGS out the water.

That makes two of us that agree with B-Cell; Chaos Theory was absolutely incredible; it nailed nearly everything it set out to do.

 

[Dalisclock]

I could agree, mostly because the use of the word "masterpiece" to me requires something really good, timeless, and something that could be trendsetting and an "instant classic." Something on the "greatest of all time" lists. I like several Ubisoft games... I just can't really think of one that is trendsetting or a timeless classic.

Come to think of it, what about Far Cry 3. I wasn't a big fan (didn't hate it either, but I was a bit bored by it after a few hours) but a lot of people really liked it and it set an example for open worlds ways after it in a big way.

Maybe if it had lopped the second half of the game off and charged us half the price. Far Cry 3 was half a masterpiece; with half of a standard, boring, repetitive, average shooter stapled onto it.

Seconded. Does anyone really remember much of the game after you killed Vaas? Because I sure as hell don't. Something something Vaas's boss, something something citra and then the bad ending is interesting to watch. That's about it.

Bioshock has a similar problem where you get to what feels like the end but the thing just keeps going for a while.