Your Favorite Game Sucks

[Nazulu]

I'll just leave this here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ptitlexxpmjrh25rbg

I haven't read a single Stolen Pixels. BECAUSE IT SUCKS!!!11!ONE11!
THOSE WHO DISAGREE WITH ME ARE FANBOYS.
HEAR ME WHINE!

As long as you know it sucks to you for your own reasons, according to the article.

Actually, this topic is doing my head in. I'm all for freedom of speech but I would prefer to see those who say it sucks give some reason. Least then it will serve a bit of purpose in the thread on a website that says it needs discussion value.

Then again it can be easily ignored or you could ask why you think it sucks.

Unless I missed/misunderstood something.

 

[Twinmill5000]

You know, I don't think the amount of times this has been said is enough to emphasize it, so:

Thank you for posting this article. It really, really, REALLY needed to be said.

With that being said, while I'm not much of a game fanboy - I do love BFBC2 and S4League, but don't think they're perfect-- they're fucked up mutated little children just like the rest - I am a platform/OS fanboy. While I can't say I ever forced people to try it before they hated it in that context, mainly because I assume everyone at some point has used MOS and Windows, and has tried multiple consoles and maybe dabbled in PC gaming, I can't say I wouldn't say "You can't bash pc gaming unless you've tried it." And you are right, it is wrong. A good gaming PC, if you build it, can go for $900 plus. If you build it, and therefore are already experienced in it.

I have every reason not to want to play Super Mario Galaxy 2 or any Wii title because I don't like what I've seen. Moreso, in this economy, having such a tight budget means that if I somehow do get enough money to buy another game, I'm not gonna get it just because I was told to because I was wrong in saying I don't like it. I don't care if I'm gonna miss something potentially good because, to be quite honest, I may just not be into that sort of thing. I like guns. I like cooperation. I like working as a team. More than that, I like healing people that accidentally walked in front of a gatling. Does Super Pillow Fluffer 4 have those things? No. The gameplay might be tight and the graphics might just be friendly and super bright, but if I want to get headaches while staring at a screen, I'll just play Touhou without shelling out 60 bucks.

 

[Srdjan]

Man this was great, Shamus I just love your way of writing.

And also death squad troopers aren't evil they are just doing their job

 

[ENKC]

I can see what the article is getting at, but it still has a gaping logic hole insofar as it suggests that one should either love or hate a game. Surely in the absence of any knowledge or experience of a game, one would feel some combination of curiosity, ambivalence or disinterest. "Hate" though is a strong opinion and entirely unjustified on any rational level unless you have first hand experience of the game or one closely related thereto.

 

[ultimateownage]

This, sir, is why I love your articles the most out of everything in this website.

 

[Spygon]

I can not agree with shamus here its like everything unless you tried it i can not see how you have an opinion on it.You cant hate or enjoy something you dont know as it works both ways you can buy a game from your favourite developer and favourite genre but not like the game.

I can understand you dont want to waste a money on a game if your not sure if you will like it but the industry is built for that you can rent it,play a demo of the game,borrow it from a friend before buying the products also games like anything have a period where you can bring it back to the shop no question asked.

Also if you only buy games in the same genres and from the same developers you not only going to miss good games but your going to play the same stuff over and over again.As they say variety is the spice of life so try games that you wouldnt normally play as sometimes you will be suprised

 

[smithy_2045]

I disagree with the article. If you don't play a game, you can't fairly judge it. There's been heaps of games I've "hated" before I've played them, and thoroughly enjoyed them when I eventually have played them.

BUT, if someone has played a game and they didn't like it, saying they played it wrong or something else to that effect is stupid.

 

[Keava]

I can not agree with shamus here its like everything unless you tried it i can not see how you have an opinion on it.You cant hate or enjoy something you dont know as it works both ways you can buy a game from your favourite developer and favourite genre but not like the game.

I can understand you dont want to waste a money on a game if your not sure if you will like it but the industry is built for that you can rent it,play a demo of the game,borrow it from a friend before buying the products also games like anything have a period where you can bring it back to the shop no question asked.

Also if you only buy games in the same genres and from the same developers you not only going to miss good games but your going to play the same stuff over and over again.As they say variety is the spice of life so try games that you wouldnt normally play as sometimes you will be suprised

So according to you, i am not allowed to dislike jRPGs, FPS, flight simulators, sport games, and some other's just basing on the fact they represent genres i consider dull, uninteresting and generally crappy ? I don't need to play Halo or newest Madden or FFXIII to know i will not enjoy them, and surely i do not wish to waste 50-60$ just to make bunch of raging fanboys satisfied with game specific arguments as to why i dislike them.

The info that is available months before a game release is usually enough to form an opinion. Plot, basics of gameplay, visuals, art direction, highlighted supposedly awesome features, it all allows me to decide whenever i am willing to risk those money on a product or not. I don't need to spend 6 hours of playing to know whenever will be hit or miss for me.

 

[joshuaayt]

Hm. I have to admit, you make a flawless point. As always.

 

[Headbiter]

I can not agree with shamus here its like everything unless you tried it i can not see how you have an opinion on it.

Then I assume you have absolutely no opinion on the following topics:

Rape.
Child pornography.
Osama bin Laden.
Drugs.
Genocide.
Being a millionaire.
Polygamy.
Adoption.
Political situation in China, most African nations and the middle east.
Israel.
Religions other than the one you follow, if there's any.
Me, and roughly 80% of the people on this website since you never met me or them in your life and probably never will.

And trust me, granted, I don't know you, your real name, how you look, hell, not even your gender. But you can bet your head I and probably every other guy who read your post now has an opinion on you just as anyone who reads this will form an opinion about me. And as far as you know as of this moment, I could very well be a world-famous celebrity or even the leader of a nation, you most certainly have built an opinion about.

The reason for that is simple:

We are humans. As such, as that very species, we have mental abilities that actually allow us to judge, evaluate and talk about stuff that we never saw or experienced or even that don't even exist. It's one of our defining characteristics.

And to be honest, it's the one thing that allows us to talk and discuss about topics in such large numbers.
Don't believe me? Well, here it goes:

Let's say I'd claim something most of you would call outragous. Let's say I claim that Hitler was a selfless man with a visionary plan that was meant to benefit humanity as a whole and that he knew that he would be hated for all time for his actions and he was willing to carry that burden for the greater good.

I'm taking an educated guess here that everyone here already itches to proove me wrong with this. People without education simply and agressively telling me I'm wrong, others starting morale discussions about the ethic borders of men and others again who like to swing around their big historic-details-willies.
Save it, I'm not standing behind above made statement nor do I intend to discuss it. The fact is however, that we CAN discuss it. We can argue about it. We all can recite quotes, name certain events or argue with our own moral values to comply with or oppose this statement. Yet I doubt that ANYONE in these forums was alive when Hitler was. Not even as babies. Even less of you would ever actually have MET the guy. Me neither, obviously.

How can we discuss about him then? Well, we have sources. Books, stories, documentations, audio tapes, movies. And while many of those are accepted as reliable, remember, that they are just third-party-information. Again, only very few of the people who gathered those information we rely all our opinions on ever actually met the guy. And those who did...well, if I wanted I could call them all liars.
And who'd be able to prove me 100% factually wrong?

The point is, however, that EVERYONE here has an opinion about Hitler. About him as a person, about his reasons, about his deeds and about what we could call his legacy through gritted teeth. Yet no one of us experienced him. Or his deeds, or his intentions and so on.
We, the people who were mostly probably born between the 1970s and 1990s, have not a single direct connection to this time. Only stories from our grandmothers and grandfathers at best. Yet we lead heated debates about this time.

And yet no one actually comes and tells us "You are not allowed to talk about that time, because you never witnessed it!"

Now obviously PC Games don't have the same....weight as the second world war and yes, I picked that very example to provocate a bit. But toning it down to games, isn't this the exact same thing?
I never had a console beside the Sega Master System II. I never played the Force Unleashed. I never played any Call of Duty-games since the second one. Yet I am very much capable of leading discussions about the development of those games. And yes, there are some points I have to guess. But you know what? My guesses are mostly right.
Why's that? Because I gathered experience. I've played PC Games for quite some time now. I've actually witnessed most events and developments in the scene. And yes, if I see a trailer for yet another shooter with brown/grey backgrounds with half-assed oneliners, I dare to critisize them. For actual flaws they have. Flaws I predicted, despite never playing the game.

Example again? I predicted that Age of Conan would be a mediocre game with pretty underwhelming success. Am I psychich? No, I just figured that if the best argument the DEVELOPERS themselves could come up with for buying the game was "It has blood and tits, erm..it's a game for "ADULTS" *winkwink* the rest of the game couldn't be that great. Shows that I wasn't so wrong now, am I?
And I most certainly don't intent to spend my money on something I don'T see a reason to support, only to force some delusional people to acutally use their brain if they want to tell me what is good about their game.

Because in the end "You can't judge the game, you never played it." is nothing but laziness and helplessness. If I actually think a game is good, I'm able to point out the good bits and PROVE them. Tell me that I can't judge something because I didn'T witness it first hand and for me it's just a mark of desperation.

After all, I also have an opinion about Jesus.
And that guy sure as hell is far away from any first-hand-experience.
For ANY of us.

 

[Malisteen]

It's one thing to form an opinion of a game before you've played it. I, for instance, do not like the new metroid game, despite not playing it and not intending to.

Spoiler

I don't like what I've seen of Samus's characterization - despite what anyone may tell you she did have characterization in the previous games through her actions and the more notorious storytelling blunders in this game do quite contradict that characterization in ways I don't appreciate, I've heard bad things from people I trust about the voice acting, I don't like that they've drawn from the manga (which I did read several issues of and formed my own negative opinion) for Samus's backstory, I don't like that they've made her backstory explicit at all, and while the 3rd person gameplay looks nice, and I might try a future, better metroid game that stuck entirely to that gameplay, the first person elements and the shift between the two gameplay modes has been described to me as terrible and clunky, which I can certainly believe, because that's how it looks in the trailers. But hey, that's just my opinion. While I don't like moviebob calling me a dimwitted racist jerk for having that opinion, I also don't waste my time finding fans of the game and lambasting them for it.

So yeah, I expect to be allowed to form and express an opinion without first hand experience without being shouted down by mindless fans.

However, this goes both ways. As annoying as fans who shout down any criticism of their personal favorites are, haters, frequently deciding they hate something for no reason at all (because it's popular, because they 'sold out', etc), can be even more rude and annoying when they take it upon themselves to shove their way into a fan community to start blasting their negativity everywhere. Pushy annoying fans build pushy annoying fan backlash and everybody gets progressively more defensive and angry until some troll sets of a flame war for the lulz.

The problem isn't so much fans being mindless and brainwashed as it is a more general problem of people just being rude on the internet. And while it's fine to have a negative opinion without firsthand experience, it's not fine to post a 'review' without such experience. That's simply not what 'review' means.

 

[veloper]

They were satire, but a lot of people agreed with point #2 - that you shouldn't have an opinion on a game until you've played it. This is a horrible and self-destructive attitude to take. As a consumer, it's your job to be discriminating with what you buy. You worked for your money (I hope) and so you owe it to yourself to be careful where you put it. And that means forming on opinions on things before you pay for them.

There's a difference between not buying a game, because you think you won't like it (maybe you seen the reviews) and broadcasting how a game sucks you know little about.
The first source is, or should be, more reliable than opinions based on hearsay. It's not surprising gamers are less appreciative of the latter.

For a negative REVIEW, you should at the very least have played the game for a couple hours (and find enough damning flaws).

If somebody just comes asking for a recommendation or does a X vs Y thread, then he deserves whatever reply he gets.

Even so, for useful opinions,
playing the game > playing the demo >> having seen gameplay footage >>> hearsay.
Just the demo should usually be enough to rip gameplay apart.
For flaws like atrocious VOs and bad gfx, just seeing a vid can be enough.

Hearsay I suppose may be good enough if the case is really clear cut.
Example: do we all know that C&C4 is trash? Yes. Have most of us played it? Fortunately, no. So maybe we should simply point to Destructoid (to a reviewer who did play it, had good sense and wasn't bought) and for good measure throw in the metacritic user score, next time somebody asks.
Then again, some things like this and Spore are communis opinio, so no harm is done if you summarise with just "shit".

 

[Wolf Hagen]

Thanks Shamus for bringing up the final Backup on some points That are hard to clerify or lets say: came up to me when the Command & Conquer series became more goofy and "WTH?!?" then a Strategy Game in an alternate Dimension setting (or better said: when Westwood finally vanished as the name behind the Series).

For those who still dont get what he is Saying: If you dont like coffee and get told by damn many friends how great their coffe is, it Probably still wont change your mind about drinking coffee. If you let yourself get convinced to try, the worst you will get is a bellyache and minimum getting disappointed.

If you pay for it: you will feel these effects plus the feeling to be ashamed, because you should have known better and the shame for Paying for something you dont even like.

Thats what it is all about^^

 

[nik3daz]

I am heartwarmed by the reasonableness of conversations that proceed like this:

A:This game sucks because of the story
B:The story isn't the main point of the game
A:Well it was for me
B:Okay, let's settle our differences and make world peace

I'd say some basic rules should be followed before publicly unleashing your dumbass opinion:

1. State your bias

It makes an opinion easier to process. E.g I will generally ignore the advice of reviews that are made from drastically different points of view as mine

2. Explain yo'self

If you say something sucks, at least give a reason or even better, a recommendation. Of course, this applies for fanboy retaliation too. "You are dumb" pales in comparison to a gameplay vid invalidating the troll's point.

3. Realize that subjective arguments are stupid

"I hate X because it's not artistic enough"
"I like X because it's really artistic"

Adding some objective examples would help.

You know. it might be nice to have a review system where you can nuke opinions if they're based on invalid facts.

Anyways, it's fine to be prejudiced/unwilling to get all the facts so long as you acknowledge this so others can avoid your stupidity.

 

[ProfessorLayton]

Either way the system gets your money... certainly you can judge a game like that by not buying it because you don't think it's your style, but going onto forums and bashing it without playing it is different. If you don't like shooters or zombies, you can safely assume you won't like Left 4 Dead. But you can't talk about the poor quality of the game without playing it. You can say it's not your thing, but that's not what people on the comments are talking about. They're talking about the 360 fanboys who flame videos of Uncharted 2 on YouTube because it's for "PS3 fags" while you're talking about not wanting to pay for a game because you don't think it's your style.

 

[Sylocat]

If I say "this game is a big pile of dog shit", that is just my opinion. But if I say "this game is a big pile of dog shit and everyone who likes it is a stupid dogshit-eater", then I'm being an asshole.

Which is exactly what Yahtzee did in his SSBB review.

 

[Ghengis John]

Hm. I have to admit, you make a flawless point. As always.

In what sense, he's simply defending the right to be belligerent. He's still wrong for exactly the reasons Jeebus noted on page one. He's just being stubborn about it. You're not always going to be Socrates, sometimes if 200 people say you're wrong, big surprise, you're wrong.

 

[Sylocat]

Its okay to have an opinion on something, but blurting out you don't like it in a forum only to reveal you haven't actually tried it is understandably going to be met with hostility by those who do like it.

This is the problem. There is no reason for hostility. I LOVE me some ice cream, but if somebody says that ice cream sucks I don't get all angry and confrontational. There is simply no reason.

Perhaps not, but if someone says "Ice cream sucks, and everyone who disagrees with me is a moronic fanboy," then that person would be a douchebag. And when a fair-sized chunk of this website mindlessly repeats everything that person says in the guise of, you know, having their own opinion, that is a shitty state of affairs.

And, as I have mentioned before, that is pretty much exactly what happened with Yahtzee's SSBB review. He EXPLICITLY STATED that everyone who liked the game was a "pathetic fanboy," and then announced that he was going to be attacked by a bunch of fanboys defending the game. It was a giant self-fulfilling prophecy.

Of course, the comment thread on the SSBB video had a much higher concentration of people agreeing with Yahtzee and claiming they were under attack by a gigantic army of Nintendo fanboys (whom the Yahtzee fans outnumbered by about 5 to 1).

 

[Daden]

It seems to me a lot of people are missing the point of Shamus's article. You can have an opinion on something you haven't played =/= Let's all go troll the forums of games we haven't played! Of COURSE shamefully uninformed trolls are annoying, but we all have our genres and developers we don't care for, and everyone is entitled to their OPINIONS.

For example, I know I will not enjoy the latest iteration of the Madden franchise. I know this because the very concept of playing football on a gaming system seems boring and pathetic to me.

Now, this is no different than someone disliking the latest RTS because the idea of top-down strategic game play fails to engage them, or someone skipping the latest shooter because the genre stagnated years ago. I like these types of games, but I can certainly understand where the criticism is coming from, and, thankfully, I don't have to have my opinion validated by random forumites in order to enjoy something.

The real problem, I think, is the inflammatory language that has come to permeate almost all forum discussions and the general inability by many to grasp this. In order to get attention or add weight to one's argument, the favored method of late is to make some sort of hyperbolic claim since many people will, without fail, develop a sense of urgency while reading such language and respond like it is a life-or-death scenario.

Perhaps it would be best if everyone would apply that age-old lesson from Kindergarten when responding to criticism: If someone calls you a stupid face, ask yourself "Am I a stupid face?" If you aren't, then getting upset is a waste of energy and probably the reaction the accuser wished for. If you are, then the self-reflection may do you some good.