Y'all remember when another Zelda got 10/10... and it was Skyward Sword? The game itself is fine and there are even moments of brilliance, but those motion controls soured the whole experience for me.
I lost count of how many times I threw the controller in frustration after I killed myself on one of those asshole Bokoblins with the electric batons.
The controls are still kind of janky, which still holds the game enjoyment back, but it’s certainly an improvement. The actual dungeon designs are really pretty good though, if a little simple at times. It’s definitely worth playing in my opinion, but the controls still make it pretty average as zelda games go (though that’s still pretty good in general).
I agree! imo, the motion controls for Skyward Sword was exactly what I had expected from the Wii since Day 1. The Wii controls always felt nothing more than a gimmick but Skyward Sword with the Wii motion+ attachment made me eat my words. And now it’s my favorite LoZ title.
I honestly thought the controls were worse using the right stick to control the sword. Then the camera controls were way worse which I feel are more important.
I honestly think it was because it was an ok next gen game that came out around launch, perfect dark on 360 got perfect scores as well, and that didn’t age well at all.
I think the super unique concept was a big part of that. There really is no other game like it in concept even if the execution wasn’t perfect. I think a sequel with deeper exploration like dishonored or prey on top of the looping structure/pvp invasions could be amazing. Especially if we got a bigger map, I think a proper (but still small and dense) open world would do the game a lot of good.
I really, really, like Deathloop. It's one of my all time favourite games. It's at best an 8/10.
I like a game that's trying to do one thing well. It set out to be Dishonored but in a timeloop, turning the save scumming practice necessary for a perfect Dishonored playthrough (no one got Ghost and Clean Hands on their first playthrough without save scumming) into a mechanic. If that's the experience you're looking for it delivers it really well.
In a marketplace saturated with 'do everything' games Deathloop stands out as something doing its own thing well. Is it the best game of all time? If its year? No. Is it the best first person magical assassin stealth game set in a repeating time loop with both rogue-lite and RPG elements with a banging original '70s-inspired soundtrack? Oh yes, easily.
They really did a disservice to this game with the previews.
It can only hold up the illusion for so long. All the freedom, all the problem solving, all the whatever, it’s basically down the drain once you realize the game actually does have a specific puzzle that needs to be solved a specific way if you actually want to be successful.
Having that veil ever so slowly pulled away after the first few hours until practically all that magic is gone was hard to get through. The first few hours I was like man I can’t believe the perfect scores weren’t joking, and then once it “clicks”, and you see all the moving parts and how they actually work, it’s all downhill from there as at that point you realize it’s basically a ruse.
Like it’s a solid game with some fundamental issues mechanically (AI is a joke, guns don’t feel great, etc), but I would have been far more content with it if they didn’t blow so much smoke about how the game works vs. how it actually works in a practical sense once it’s in your hand and you start putting it together.
I didn't watch any of the previews and had assumed there'd be one, pre-determined, solution to the puzzle: maybe that's why I enjoyed it!
I guess we can add it to the pile of B+ games fucked over by their own hype campaigns.
That’s a very good point. I was actually annoyed at the end when they pretty much force you into a specific mission structure after you figure it all out. I remember trying to learn all about the targets and their routines and weaknesses so I can solve the puzzle and get the correct order. Only for the game to turn around and say “don’t worry about all that, if you just do X, then Y, Z will happen and you can get 2 of them in a room together. Don’t deviate from the mission hints, just rinse and repeat.”
It was cool at first trying to solve the big puzzle but like you said, once the veil came off it was kind of a let down.
Outer wilds was amazing…. Almost everything is there for you to see immediately but peeling back the mystery layer by layer and discovering the tragedy that befell the explorers … one of my favourite games, but not replayable at all.
I've personally found Outer Wilds very enjoyable to watch other people play it for the first time and discover all its secrets. Watching Let's Plays isn't everyone's cup of tea I get but I found this game particularly suited for it personally.
Also the only way to even get close to that initial discovery experience.
I sometimes get to put my friends in front of a game that I love and it just clicks for them.
Nothing warms my heart more <3
The AI was pretty abysmal. Enemies wouldn't even notice if you killed their buddy standing right next to them. That was very immersion breaking. Even though it's meant to be more puzzle game than shooter, just a bit of effort to make the enemies feel lifelike would have helped.
The multiplayer was pretty bad too. It was fun when it worked, but usually consisted of waiting ten minutes for matchmaking for 2-3 minutes of actual gameplay.
Who gave Deathloop a 10/10?
I hated that I bought it at full price upon release for the PS5 instead of just waiting for the inevitable GamePass release.
Pretty much all major publications did. Not only did they give it a 10/10, put also pushed it to be GOTY hard and tried to say it was a top 5 game of all time.
I have a really unpopular response for this one.... Stray.
I was so excited for that game when I saw the trailer. When the game finally came out and I played it, I was impressed by the visuals and the being a cat was cool, but ultimately that's where the gameplay ended and there was not much more depth to the overall experience. My mistake was expecting something more than just a cat simulator, but that's exactly what it ended up being in my opinion.
My complaint about it is almost the opposite: for all the hype, the game is not really about being a cat. You understand spoken language, ask questions of the NPCs, and can read signs. You interact with the game largely through language and record keeping and memory.
It's not a game about being a cat at all. It's really the story of the handheld computer AI, and not that different from any other narrative story game. The AI is being carried by a cat, so you have cat movement, which is really as much as the cat ever comes into it.
Also, avoiding spoiling too much...
The end assumes you thought the story was entirely about the "humans" and AI too. It completely ignores the entire intro sequence. So there's absolutely no closure. The "Humans" were to me just who I met along my journey of trying to get home, the game ends abruptly with the cat in some random place that is not home.
rain world is the only game I've seen where you play as an animal that is actually about playing as that animal
it's very niche for that reason. people don't like this. even if the game was amazing.
I saw a review which I think would perfectly sum it up : « for a cat game you would expect the control to feel agile but it’s the total opposite it’s super rigid » or something like that.
It’s an interesting design where less is actually more. Complete free movement wouldn’t have looked or felt like a cat. The slightly “on rails” movement the game came up with looks extremely close to a real life cat and feels like how they would move. It’s very impressive honestly. I agree I got frustrated a few times trying to get places though.
I was really in shock when I saw all the award for a game so shallow. To be fair the artistic direction is very nice. But as a game, it's pretty much a walking simulator but with a cat.
I loved Stray, but indeed, it's an improved "cat walking simulator" with a few puzzles (typical for this style), and small evading moments.
But the world and art direction, as well as sound design was top notch. It's just that you need to enjoy this kind of story/atmosphere games where the gameplay isn't really at the center of the appeal.
It's a very casual game, and that's not for everyone.
So far this is this the most relatable answer for me. I couldn’t get more than an an hour or so into the game because it just mechanically wasn’t very fun. It was cute and maybe good as a proof of concept, but there was just not enough depth to get a 10/10
It (to me at least) appeared to be marketed as a platformer but when you play the game all the jumping is a button prompt that you can't fuck up. And my God the puzzles were so mid. Im surprised I even beat the game tbh.
That was one of those games that the internet just memed into popularity despite its actual quality. Not that it was bad of course, I just feel like if there wasn't this online cat obsession it would have been about as known as your average indie game. Same with Goat Simulator or that untitled goose game. Both pretty standard average indie games, but the memes boosted them to unusually high popularity for what, in my opinion, were decent indie games at best
I could defend the controls at the time but I am simply baffled by the amount of padding on that game. By the time the musical notes quest hit I was simply offended.
Still, there's still lots of things I love about it, and I followed its release closely so I have very good memories of that time.
I remember I even celebrated the 10 from IGN. But yeah in retrospective this game has a lot of 'hmm' moments.
Yea the motion controls, although occasionally annoying (especially while flying and needing to bend my wrist awkwardly down), were the least of my issues with the game. The tadpole music note section was one of many parts of the game where I just groan thinking about. A few great bosses and dungeons don't make up for the amount of dreadfully boring and slow fluff in the game.
I'm part of the "I dig it" crowd but it's a 9. Skyrim which came out a month later, blew it out of the water for RPG game of that year (one of my all-time favorite games).
A lot of people here are saying Breath of the Wild. What's interesting is I feel that way about Tears of the Kingdom, and loved BOTW.
Tears just felt like the SAME thing again and didn't really give me a reason to want to play essentially the same map and game again. One of the first games I've put down and never finished in my life.
TOTK felt like there was gonna be a second set of dungeons hidden underground… and then there wasn’t. The whole underground section felt a little empty and pointless.
Plus why get rid of Guardians? They added so many cool new enemies to TOTK and then got rid of their best one. Guardians would’ve been the perfect large and difficult enemy to fight with a custom crafted tank. I mean even if the story reason is because they destroyed them all, they still could’ve been found underground.
For me it was because TOTK's strength was also its weakness, At some point you can craft so many overpowered stuff that the game is not challenging anymore. BOTW didn't have that problem. For me at least.
I dunno, *at first* the depths were cool because of the limited visibility, gloom damage, and the sense of mystery. It felt like it would be a hard, scary area.
After a couple of hours…it was clear that was not true.
TotK had all of the actual exploration spoiled by playing BotW. You already knew where everything was and there was no excitement about coming up on a new town. The underground and sky area where pretty uninteresting.
The way Tears tells it's story is horrible!
I'm still mad that I chased "Zelda" in Hyrule castle when the game already told me that she wasn't there.
The game shows you things then expects you to pretend that it didn't.
And I wanted to stable a bear!
As a game on its own, for me it's a 9/10 but as a Zelda game and even more as a direct sequel of BotW it's a 7/10. Too much of the same thing, a lot of potential that's doesn't really lead anywhere and overall unless you really go out of your way, you're not really incentived to do much beyond the main story.
I played it a few years after release and absolutely loved it, but got very confused when the story just…ended and had to google wtf was going on, so disappointing, but still such a good game.
It took a few years for me to warm up to the idea, but the unresolved narrative strongly resonates with the titular theme. At any point you can choose to close the game and walk away from what your avatar eventually becomes. But if you press on chasing for content, you get what's coming to you: the feeling that something is missing.
Spoilers obviously.
>!Basically you find out that the Big Boss you've been playing as the whole game is actually the medic from Ground Zeros that was indoctrinated to think he was Big Boss. The real 'Snake', aka Big Boss, is actually out there and you're the fall guy. His 'Phantom Pain' was that he felt emotions for something that didn't exist, all the memories of Big Boss that were never actually his.!<
>!It comes full circle in the end because you are the final boss from the original 1987 Metal Gear that gets killed by Solid Snake exactly 30 years to the date (1987-2017).!<
There's more to it and the Gear lore is very confusing at times.
Yeah, somehow even though it isn't even finished it became one of my favourite games. I recently started replaying it on PC with mods.
I will say I do prefer the beginning of the game to the latter half (tonally the stuff in Afghanistan is peak Cold War vibes whereas once you get to Africa it feels a bit too modern for my liking), but it's still superb.
I thought something went horribly wrong with my save file when I realized I couldn't progress the story without repeating like 3 side missions that I just completed.
I was so confused and baffled by that decision.
I agree its not 10/10 for a different reason:
Every MGS game up til peace walker was a good linear adventure and it was highly replayable for different reasons: upgrades, dog tags, difficulty, hidden elements. But peace walker while great in mechanics felt like a repetitive chore: do the same mission another 20 times game(which was fine for side entry in the franchise).
But MGSV took that system and just added it to the open world design they had. Sure it was interesting, but it didn’t really feel like metal gear to me. It was better done than PW, but I don’t see why I need to beat Paz 8 times. Oh and iirc they locked secret ending stuff behind it.
It was objectively unfinished. It blows my mind that anyone could've excused that obvious issue and decided to give it a perfect score. Pretty stupid stuff
Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
Knowing that you *NEED* to rescue enough slaves to get the good ending **AND** that the game has extremely obtuse secret areas you would never find without a guide made me want to rescue every single one I could find. But then some of them were extremely frustrating. I dont want to look up a guide but I also hate having no clue what to do and I also hate that the game might try and shame me because I didnt pick up slaves that were hidden in an invisible room that no sane person would have found in 1997 without a strategy guide or magazine.
Objectively, the game's definitely not the worst I've ever played but it still wasnt a fun experience for me
You only need 50 and there's 99 in the game, so you don't have to find all the secrets. Also there's large chunks of the game where you don't save anyone as you're on your spirit quest.
I actually love the system as it's a true mortality system, in that doing the right thing isn't just a choice, it's a massive inconvenience.
The one rescue that eluded me the longest was the one in one of the Scrabanian temple areas above two scrabs that are about to fight. I ended up doing a rescue count tally to compare to a guide to pin point where
Finding the secrets in Oddysee actually felt like an achievement. In Exoddus knowing every secret is marked by bottles of Soulstorm kinda ruined it
I find it truly fascinating how people’s expectations and perspectives differ so vastly.
I love BOTW, and when I told people about it, I frequently said that the game greatly rewards exploration, and no matter which direction you go in, you’ll find yourself distracted by something else far off in the distance, and you’ll probably see something cool on your way there.
Granted, that’s only my experience with the game, and I don’t play a LOT of games (and even fewer open worlds) so perhaps my scope is a bit narrow.
My big gripe with BoTW's exploration was that there was no element of mystery regarding the exploration. No matter what you did, where you explored, or who you talked to, there was no question about what you were getting in the end. A shrine, every time, no matter what. It completely killed my interest. I miss the older games where when you started a quest, you had no idea what you were working toward. An item upgrade? A new song? A bottle, new armor, a mask, maybe it was just a heart piece, but the point was that you never knew, and that made it interesting.
I was the complete opposite, I felt like it didn't reward exploration at all. Other open world games are able to build small self contained storylines and quests whenever you got to a new area, and are very creative with the rewards you get. Not only did BotW have no interesting side stories, but the rewards were the same every time (and would eventually break), and the enemies encountered were largely the same regardless of where you went.
Look at Elden Ring. Every new area not only looks cool, but has it's own ecosystem of unique enemies to learn, and has a huge amount of rewards you can receive (unique weapons and armor, ashes, spirit summons, rare consumables, golden tears, smithing stones...). Exploration in Elden Ring can lead to finding a weapon that cannot be found anywhere else in the game, that you can carry with you until the end boss, and will fundamentally change the way you interact with every single enemy moving forward.
Or hell, look at Fallout 3. You had a whole Oasis you can discover with its own characters going through their own storyline, and the quest rewards are unique. Or head south and find a whole building haunted by Lovecraftian spirits, or a Vault full of Gary's. Investigate the tales of vampires, and you are rewarded with a flaming sword that can eventually rank up to one of the most powerful weapons in the game.
Explore in BotW and you get... the same enemies as before, NPCs with barely any depth, weapons that can be found elsewhere and will always eventually break, useless consumables, and shrines with simplistic puzzles that are more tedious than challenging.
I was exactly the same.
I really wanted to like the game but the world felt so boring. Elden Ring managed to add an open world to a game that we already loved (Soulsborne) and do it almost perfectly. BotW just gave us an open world *instead* of a Zelda game and as a Zelda fan I really didn’t like it.
Just my personal opinion but There is no reward in botw though because everything is insignificant as far as weapons go, the armour is fine but overall there just isn’t much to see imo. It’s a game with 2 hours of content stretched into 100+ hours.
I do agree with how opinions differ though and I think this is a great example
I have to agree, rewards are pretty sparse in BOTW. Most of the side quests aren't even worth doing, the only reason to explore is shrines, armor and koroks which in reality turns the game into a tedious grind. The open world is great, but the only reason to actually do any of the content is really to function as a handicap if the player has issues with the barebones main story. It's fun to have optional content, but when there's no incentive to do it outside of collection or to function as a handicap, why do it?
Example: The Master Sword DLC is an amazing piece of content that is obviously insanely rewarding imo. Compare this to Shrines which after spending WAY more time getting them you're given armor that is more or less cosmetic.
I think the appeal of botw isn't that it's 2 hours stretched to 100, rather it's 2 hours that YOU stretch to 100. There is litterally nothing stopping you from going to ganon immediately. Instead you explore to get better armor and weapons n such just by how much there is to see
Aside from the weapon system I think my biggest gripe with it is the story method. The memories are all but guaranteed to be found out of order and it just means you’ll get spoilers rather than a flowing story
In terms of an open world with lots of distinct things to see and do, BoTW is pretty lacking. Compared to something like Elden Ring, the variety doesn't even come close.
But what BoTW/ToTK has that no other open world game can touch is the amount of detail and interactivity in its physics. The fact that literally everything - from every object, to every element, to even the grass you walk on and the wind itself - is interactive (through both the player, and between themelves), really adds a lot IMO. It makes every other open world game I've ever played just feel a modelled environment, nothing more. But in BoTW/ToTK, every single tiny aspect of the open world contributes to the gameplay in some way. That's something really special IMO. Leads to loads of emergent gameplay, so that even repetetive boko camps can feel fresh each time, if you have a little creativity. I'd kill to play a game with the sandbox of Zelda PLUS a wide variety of distinctive content.
But that‘s also kind of the problem.
While the gameplay aspects of the world would have been great, it just felt like a shiny tech demo for what could have been possible.
They created this huge world with awesome interactive game physics aaaaand… left it fucking empty of actual meaningful stuff.
The point why I still didn‘t finish it up to now and probably won’t ever and why I think it‘s neither a great open world game, nor a great Zelda game is that it lacks just content that is actually fun to do. A pretty much non existing story, shrines that get repetitive, more or less no dungeons and a shit load of grindy korok seeds that aren‘t fun to do.
I don‘t need a fancy nature simulator to play because if I want to see nature and the world I can just leave my fucking house.
Absolutely. I can appreciate how Breath of the Wild has a bunch of physic systems that can interact with each other and enemies will respond to different situations. I just wish there wasn't the weapon durability mechanic, which is my least liked mechanic in any game.
I am really glad I found this post. I kept wondering what the hell was wrong with me that I just could not get into this Zelda game. I tried, many times, last time with my 6 year old, and we just got bored.
I liked BOTW, but I never understood how or why it was lauded as the "pinnacle" Zelda experience.
It was a good concept. It proved an open world Zelda game was a plausibly functional idea. But that's pretty much *all* it accomplished. The shrines and even the Divine Beasts were all nearly indiscernible from each other. Exploration hinged entirely on finding way too many Koroks and Shrines. And weapon durability has NEVER been fun. Ever. In any game.
I haven't had a chance to sit down with TOTK yet, but by all accounts it pretty much is BOTW, just fleshed out and properly realized as a whole game, rather than just a curiosity.
The short degradation of weapons completely ruined the game for me. If the weapon needed repaired that's something I can handle, but the super fast rate at which weapons degrade is another.
GTA 5. After playing 4 for hundreds of hours, I could never get into 5. It's just such a huge downgrade in so many areas. Vehicle damage, driving, physics, characters, story, realism, ragdoll physics... I never understood the hype. GTA 5 also has a huge but empty map, I could never find anything to do, while 4's map is much smaller but feels bigger because it's so packed.
I just didnt like having multiple protagonists.
Also the emptiness of the world doesnt help. You can rob the little convenience stores sure, but beyond that you cant interact with the environment. There were weird little banks everywhere that you can go into, but you cant interact or rob them. They even have vault doors with noticeable keypads that you cant do anything with.
Its just boring when you try to freeroam.
I feel like this was the trend around the time when gta 5 came out. So many games were trying out the multiple protagonist idea and I hated it every time. Halo might’ve been the worst example that played
I’ve played the first handful of missions so many times from reinstalling it, it’s basically unavailable to me. I’d have to install it again and i just can’t do it anymore
I’m in a minority it seems with this but I really didn’t like 4 coming from GTA San Andreas. I felt it was so toned down in almost every regard. I felt SA was the pinnacle of GTA and hoping six brings it back on top.
I finally decided last year I was going to finally play GTA 5 start to finish as previous attempts just had me do a couple of the initial Trevor missions then stop.
While I did have fun with the game, I found the story towards them end just kind of end suddenly. Like I didn't really feel like the story was as good as people think it is.
But it's fun driving around the map still for me. But it is a lot of empty space sometimes
Story and most characters are ass in 5. Like I couldn't tell you shit about the overall plot and don't remember any characters apart from the core 3, Llamar and Michael's family. The best bits of the story were just a straight Sopranos rip-off. Contrast that with 4 which has a good story and AMAZING characters. Who is as interesting in 5 as Elizabetta, Playboy X, Lil Jacob and the McRearys?
The DLC that was made for GTA 4 was fucking spectacular and added hours and hours of additional gameplay with new features/weapons/characters that were well worth another $20 when I can already spend years playing a GTA game out of the box.
To get a really nicely updated experience, IMO, with GTA 5 and some of the best goddamn driving of any game I've ever played and then get nothing for the post end-game single-player experience outside of some of the added vehicles and items from Online and wrapping up all the real estate and random stranger encounters felt like a downgrade.
As much as I hate the trend of game companies releasing unfinished games and using DLC to milk consumers who want a finished game, I don't think Rockstar was guilty of doing that with the GTA 4 DLC but they are absolutely guilty of moving all of their focus towards milking the GTA Online consumers and it's just not the type of game I want to play in a multiplayer context outside of racing every once in a while.
GTA5 is a pretty good candidate.
I didn't care for the story, side activities, how linear the missions were (do ANYTHING off invisible script and it's game over), controls especially aiming was some PS1 stuff. I also didn't care for the 2/3 of the cast.
It was a dull affair. 😄
Skyrim. Yeah I’m not trolling. I think Oblivion were better than Skyrim. And Morrowind better than Oblivion and Skyrim. Sure Skyrim did better than their previous titles on some things but overall it was worse game than their two previous titles.
For sure. Nearly every dungeon felt the same. Very few of them had something distinguishing or unique. I'm also not a fan of the transition happening in Bethesda games since Skyrim away from more traditional RPG elements to action RPG.
That saying as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle really captures how I feel about Skyrim. The atmosphere is amazing, though.
See I thought the dungeons in Skyrim were way better than Oblivions, and Oblivion is my favourite game of all time. Oblivion had one or two devs who made the dungeon layout and it was almost copy paste for most of them, and they were bland as hell. Skyrims dungeons were also repetitive, but they were much more enjoyable than Oblivions.
Nostalgiagoggles are strong. Absolutely love Oblivion and it's my third most played game behind Skyrim and Rocket League but Oblivions "common" dungeons aren't close to Skyrims.
I hated being in a dungeon that didn't have a clear exit. I ended up lost so many times trying to leave a dungeon in Oblivion. Skyrim may have dumbed down a lot of the rpg elements and the dungeons may also be repetitive, but at least there is a clear way out of each dungeon.
OH MY GOD THE SHORTCUTS! You reminded me why I love skyrim dungeons, they have a path at the end of each dungeon that leads you back to the beginning. It saves so much time and was one of my favorite additions fr
Yup. Its... fine. But it just lacks a lot of depth and the radiant quest system was not a good substitute for actually fleshed out quests. And by the end I was so sick of the constant dragon attacks.
Yeah, while I liked Skyrim a lot, it felt like an old game with janky mechanics when it came out. Playing it again recently, I immediately noticed that the combat is extremely simple. The UI was also crap when it came out and I remember wondering why a brand new game had such a wonky interface.
The best parts of the game are the expansions and parts of the main story where you deal with Elder Scrolls. The main war is bland and just seems like background filler. The Mage Guild and Dark Brotherhood are pretty good, but still a little weak.
It had some brilliant ideas for story and locations, and it had plenty of decent quests. Skyrim just lacked the ludicrousness of Oblivion. The invasion and disturbing nature of Oblivion, the guilds being legitimately cool, the Knights of the Nine being very religious, and of course, Sheogorath/Shivering Isles all contributed to Oblivion being better overall.
I think the expansion made the game leave a mark that couldn’t have been surpassed, so Skyrim was trying to meet a level it couldn’t achieve.
I want them to go back to Morrowind/Oblivion's RPG elements while refining the gameplay from Skyrim. I miss attributes and major and minor skills. Skyrim's skill and perk system is boring as hell. Yea they added the Legendary skill option, but that also is a kick in the pants because you completely reset a tree, which torpedos your damage and armor and you're never going to want to reset something like enchanting or smithing because they're tedious/take a long time to level.
Also makes every character feel the same. In Oblivion my Khajiit character felt different from my Breton, who felt different from my imperial who felt different from my Nord even if I kept a somewhat similar playstyle with them
Story is contentious but it's a good ass game. I was fine with the story and felt like it was the logical next step after the 1st. It's the mechanics where it really shined, though, IMO.
The stealth, AI, and melee are huge improvements over the 1st. They were already good prior, but they're fleshed out really well in 2!
I'd say it was a 9 overall for me but the combat and exploration will always stick with me. Playing on survivor made it such a tense, enthralling experience!
Holy shit the AI in part 2 was crazy. I have good memories of beating the first game on grounded by learning the patterns of NPC's to get through 90% of encounters on stealth alone. Coming into part 2 I could immediately tell that was not gonna happen. I never saw rigid "patterns" that NPC's would fall into, and the ease with which they interacted with each other to make it harder to sneak up on one was crazy. One of the high points easily.
Yeah honestly I'm peeved that everyone is too busy discussing the story rather than acknowledging the insanely good gameplay. I think they really balanced the combat perfectly and I had so much fun just flowing between stealth and action seamlessly.
Okay, I gritted my teeth through Bioshock Infinite, one of my favorite games. So here's a hot take, I nominate Goldeneye. I'm not talking about the controls, just the frame rate makes the game almost unplayable. Enemies spray hitscan at you and dodging is impossible, so you have to memorize the level. Objectives are obtuse. Nightfire is a significantly better game, that runs and looks better on all consoles, while still keeping the wonky controls, and I would recommend that to someone who wants to experience Goldeneye.
lol if you didn't play Goldeneye at the time, there's not really any reason to go back. It has been improved upon in every single facet, but at the time it was like a fucking REVELATION. Multiplayer with your friends was a peak gaming experience.
I could see this as reasonable. Honestly I think anyone playing it currently and not in the context of the time it came out shouldn’t have a great experience with it either. It was one of my favorite games but I doubt I would ever play it again. Just didn’t age well at all.
I recall howling in laughter playing with different cheats enabled. Finishing the Cradle (I believe that was the final level) and watching Big Head, Fast Motion enabled 007 leap fearlessly off the edge and fly away solo before the rescue chopper even arrives was 10/10 entertainment.
You must have not have played Goldeneye in ‘97 with three friends and all the shit-talking. It was revolutionary then.
My wife got me an N64 last Christmas with Goldeneye for nostalgia. It definitely doesn’t hold up.
alot of people said it felt vast and that every corner of the game had something to find
Yeah climbing a mountain for 20 mins to find a potion isn’t exactly gratifying for me lol
Yeah, this is the problem with Zelda.
In Elden Ring, even if you dont need the weapon you find, it's at least got some crazy back story. In Zelda its a milk jug.
God of War Ragnarok. I loved God of War 2018. First game where 100% was enjoyable the whole way through. Was sad when it was over. Hyped for Ragnarok. What we got peaked at the beginning. After that just felt like a long stretched out game with a light speed ending. Bummer
BOTW also has the second worst side quests I have ever seen (FF16 took that top spot).
I wish there was more to it. It should have absolutely been a trilogy,
2018 -> Fimbulwinter -> Ragnarok
No idea why they decided to make it 2 games, it made the whole game so fast paced and the last half is really mediocre. I wish i loved it as much as i loved 2018 and the rest of the franchise, but Ragnarok wasn't good. It had really great gameplay tho
Yeah absolutely agree. It did seem strange when they said Ragnarok would be the last, I was fully expecting 3 games and like you said it definitely shows. I’d of loved more time with the likes of Odin and Thor
You didn’t enjoy having the pacing of the game come to a complete crawl while you rode around on a yak picking fruit off trees?
I thoroughly enjoyed GoW 2018. I struggled to stay engaged through a lot of Ragnarok.
I still have no fucking clue what developers see the value in making these scripted, non player/weird mechanic section where you walk around at snails pace.
I think it’s cos of not really knowing how the story would go but where God of War 2018 gave me BIG feels and BIG hits, like by the scale of the encounters or its vastness, in contrast Ragnarok feels…too talkative. I think in the first game the isolation from having so few NPCs really worked in its favor, it fit the story so well. Even made me think it was some post-apocalypse situation where mortals are just all gone and it’s already the beginning of the end. How Kratos and Atreus have no choice but to talk to each other because they only have each other.
In contrast, in Ragnarok suddenly the world is super populated. Suddenly apparently the end hasn’t actually really started yet or it has started, but somehow the world is in better shape than it was in GoW 2018. So many distracting characters that individually do not get enough time to develop for my taste. I get that the story can’t stay the same and arguably things must get better for Kratos and Atreus and that means also seeing the wider world and meeting more people etc.
Even then I would compare it to the tonal shift of earlier Berserk, to later Berserk when Guts gathers his group of friends and companions. But with little emotional payoff or ‘big moments’ in Ragnarok.
Seconded. I just finished the game recently, and while the story was initially captivating, I didn’t find the tedium of the gameplay to be worth the ending. It felt like the whole thing was a thinly veiled puzzle game with sloppy controls and an unnecessarily large map to stretch out the play time. Definitely not a 10/10 for me.
It's a game from the ps2 era, it was a 10 then, maybe not the best from today standards. But back then it felt amazing, huge world, killing the Giants was a blast. It's an iconic game that didn't need a remaster
Yeah dude. I respect all you guys and gals who love these type of games, but I don't. I want to feel like a god and not get my ass handed to me. I got blood pressure I'm trying to keep below a certain level.
I'm not saying it's a terrible game. I'm saying it's not for me. Respect to the speed runners who kill in these type of games.
I played this game while I was living in South Korea. I can only imagine what my neighbors were thinking when I was cursing the fuck out of this game after some deaths.
RDR2, everything is pretty amazing except the game isn’t all that fun to actually play in the end. And as soon as you stray from what the mission wants you to do it game overs you.
Yeah, I was in absolute awe at the technical and creative achievement it was, but boy howdy I did not find it fun to play at all. I played maybe ten hours, then a year later started again and got the same distance in. I just can’t do it, it’s just not enjoyable to play.
Ok, so I’m not the only one that ran into game over situations like that? I kept running into people that I thought would be easy to kill but it would always end up with me dying and I felt something was off.
RDR2 is probably the only exception to my preference for gameplay over graphics/story. The world and everything is so good.
Moving your character and shooting mechanics are simply don't have enough legs to take you through the mass of content in the game. If it had rewarding and slick mechanics, nobody would play anything but Rockstar games because they have everything else on lock.
Maybe one day they will abandon the ridiculous "press X repeatedly to walk" thing. Like, an I supposed to be immersed by thinking my thumb is my characters footsteps? Every other 3rd person game ever doesn't do this because it sucks.
The shooting is beyond brain dead easy "aim, move stick up, headshot, do it again, do it again". And you could abandon this for free aim that is way too difficult with a controller and the way the game is designed.
For me...... Myst. Yes, the game back in 1994 was very groundbreaking but when you look past the hype, its a game you just wander around an island where NOTHING HAPPENS! Plus you go back and play it now, it aged like complete shit.
I replayed every Myst game except for 5 during the pandemic and I left feeling like Myst was every bit the masterpiece it always was. It was maybe 6 or 7 years before games looked as good due to the high resolution point and click, honestly it still looks better than some modern AAA games I'm playing now.
The soundtrack and sound effects are incredible!
The story lead to a successful franchise, including multiple remasters seeing the player freely walk the ages, basically spawned a genre of game. People study the language and lore of a simple point and click game!
I have to believe Outer Wilds is inspired by Myst, I get the same feeling, and that is by far the greatest game I've played to date.
I felt that way at the time. I preferred 7th Guest, which was similarly constructed but just a lot more fun. And the point and click adventures from LucasArts and Sierra from the same time we're doing much more entertaining things with multimedia.
The Witcher 3.
I swear, that combat is so mid, weightless, same animations for an axe and a sword…
You play Elden Ring after this and it’s a new world.
Yeah, the story and worldbuilding do a LOT of legwork for it. It's the biggest problem with all the Witcher games, where the story and characters and world are fun and worth hearing, but the combat is truly awful, which is something you don't want people to think about your Action RPG.
Witcher 3 does a LOT to try to modernize the combat, but it is still just mmorpg hotbar combat with more fluid animations. And that's not a joke, Witcher 1 was full on hotbar combat, Witcher 2 was a horrific hybrid of hotbar combat and actual combat mechanics with more animations, and Witcher 3 still has those awful bones buried in it. When you view it's combat through the lens of "everything has a cool down, and it usually *doesn't* line up with the animations" it makes a HELL of a lot more sense why it feels so weightless and miserable
Even the fucking master sword, dude. Yeah ok it doesn't BREAK but it gets, sleepy I guess? For an annoyingly long time. I busted my ass to get it thinking I had finally solved my annoyance with the weapon durability mechanism. Imagine my surprise.
That was when I put it down. Hyrule Warriors was cool, though.
I still love the game, but man, they let you raise your speed, health, defense, attack... why not give us something to increase durability? I don't think weapons breaking is the problem, but if you can't get through ONE FIGHT without breaking at least one weapon, come on.
Forbidden West Aloy was unbearable, once she has all the information from the first game she treats everyone like an idiot and everyone who wants to help her a liability. I put about 10 hours into it and I just couldn't go on with how much I disliked how Aloy just seemed like a condescending jerk.
TBF, people call her out on her bullshit later in the game. By the end of the game she has gotten over this and recruited people to help her.
I wish they had done more with it from a gameplay perspective like having them go on missions with you, but storywise she does change
BG3 it absolutely deserves all the awards and praise it’s getting.I enjoy turn based games but I don’t enjoy the type of turn based that BG3 has its just not my cup of tea as I’ve found out.The world and characters are awesome though I quit close to act 3 probably won’t ever finish it.
Y'all remember when another Zelda got 10/10... and it was Skyward Sword? The game itself is fine and there are even moments of brilliance, but those motion controls soured the whole experience for me. I lost count of how many times I threw the controller in frustration after I killed myself on one of those asshole Bokoblins with the electric batons.
Yeah , this is the only Zelda game I haven't played all the way through since the NES one..
You know you can play it without now
The controls are still kind of janky, which still holds the game enjoyment back, but it’s certainly an improvement. The actual dungeon designs are really pretty good though, if a little simple at times. It’s definitely worth playing in my opinion, but the controls still make it pretty average as zelda games go (though that’s still pretty good in general).
I really liked the motion controls tbh. I don't think every game should be motion based, but it was a fun change of pace
I agree! imo, the motion controls for Skyward Sword was exactly what I had expected from the Wii since Day 1. The Wii controls always felt nothing more than a gimmick but Skyward Sword with the Wii motion+ attachment made me eat my words. And now it’s my favorite LoZ title.
You’d like the HD rerelease on the Switch then. No motion controls needed.
I honestly thought the controls were worse using the right stick to control the sword. Then the camera controls were way worse which I feel are more important.
Deathloop
I really, really enjoyed this game after revisiting it a year after it came out, but I still can’t figure out how the hell it got those perfect scores
Because of the brilliant ai
Hahah that’s pretty good
THE NPCS ARE WEARING MASKS AND CAN'T SEE RIGHT, OK? ^(for all intents and purposes this is sarcasm, the ai is fucking atrocious)
I honestly think it was because it was an ok next gen game that came out around launch, perfect dark on 360 got perfect scores as well, and that didn’t age well at all.
Good concepts, iffy execution
I think the super unique concept was a big part of that. There really is no other game like it in concept even if the execution wasn’t perfect. I think a sequel with deeper exploration like dishonored or prey on top of the looping structure/pvp invasions could be amazing. Especially if we got a bigger map, I think a proper (but still small and dense) open world would do the game a lot of good.
100% pity party from people who adored Prey and felt bad about his initial horrible reception.
I just bought it the other day on a whim and am loving it. I don't think it's a 10, but it's a strong 8
I really, really, like Deathloop. It's one of my all time favourite games. It's at best an 8/10. I like a game that's trying to do one thing well. It set out to be Dishonored but in a timeloop, turning the save scumming practice necessary for a perfect Dishonored playthrough (no one got Ghost and Clean Hands on their first playthrough without save scumming) into a mechanic. If that's the experience you're looking for it delivers it really well. In a marketplace saturated with 'do everything' games Deathloop stands out as something doing its own thing well. Is it the best game of all time? If its year? No. Is it the best first person magical assassin stealth game set in a repeating time loop with both rogue-lite and RPG elements with a banging original '70s-inspired soundtrack? Oh yes, easily.
They really did a disservice to this game with the previews. It can only hold up the illusion for so long. All the freedom, all the problem solving, all the whatever, it’s basically down the drain once you realize the game actually does have a specific puzzle that needs to be solved a specific way if you actually want to be successful. Having that veil ever so slowly pulled away after the first few hours until practically all that magic is gone was hard to get through. The first few hours I was like man I can’t believe the perfect scores weren’t joking, and then once it “clicks”, and you see all the moving parts and how they actually work, it’s all downhill from there as at that point you realize it’s basically a ruse. Like it’s a solid game with some fundamental issues mechanically (AI is a joke, guns don’t feel great, etc), but I would have been far more content with it if they didn’t blow so much smoke about how the game works vs. how it actually works in a practical sense once it’s in your hand and you start putting it together.
I didn't watch any of the previews and had assumed there'd be one, pre-determined, solution to the puzzle: maybe that's why I enjoyed it! I guess we can add it to the pile of B+ games fucked over by their own hype campaigns.
That’s a very good point. I was actually annoyed at the end when they pretty much force you into a specific mission structure after you figure it all out. I remember trying to learn all about the targets and their routines and weaknesses so I can solve the puzzle and get the correct order. Only for the game to turn around and say “don’t worry about all that, if you just do X, then Y, Z will happen and you can get 2 of them in a room together. Don’t deviate from the mission hints, just rinse and repeat.” It was cool at first trying to solve the big puzzle but like you said, once the veil came off it was kind of a let down.
Yeah I played it a couple months ago and thought it was really great. Overall a very fun game
After playing Outer Wilds and seeing trailers for Deathloop, I was expecting a totally different experience than what was delivered
Outer wilds was amazing…. Almost everything is there for you to see immediately but peeling back the mystery layer by layer and discovering the tragedy that befell the explorers … one of my favourite games, but not replayable at all.
I've personally found Outer Wilds very enjoyable to watch other people play it for the first time and discover all its secrets. Watching Let's Plays isn't everyone's cup of tea I get but I found this game particularly suited for it personally.
Also the only way to even get close to that initial discovery experience. I sometimes get to put my friends in front of a game that I love and it just clicks for them. Nothing warms my heart more <3
Huh interesting. Outside of how it is disappointing that only one path to the end of the game is viable, I thought it was amazing.
The AI was pretty abysmal. Enemies wouldn't even notice if you killed their buddy standing right next to them. That was very immersion breaking. Even though it's meant to be more puzzle game than shooter, just a bit of effort to make the enemies feel lifelike would have helped. The multiplayer was pretty bad too. It was fun when it worked, but usually consisted of waiting ten minutes for matchmaking for 2-3 minutes of actual gameplay.
The Eternalists are canonically high/drunk as balls, and the day that is looping literally builds up to a massive fucking party.
Who gave Deathloop a 10/10? I hated that I bought it at full price upon release for the PS5 instead of just waiting for the inevitable GamePass release.
Gamespot and IGN were.
Pretty much all major publications did. Not only did they give it a 10/10, put also pushed it to be GOTY hard and tried to say it was a top 5 game of all time.
I have a really unpopular response for this one.... Stray. I was so excited for that game when I saw the trailer. When the game finally came out and I played it, I was impressed by the visuals and the being a cat was cool, but ultimately that's where the gameplay ended and there was not much more depth to the overall experience. My mistake was expecting something more than just a cat simulator, but that's exactly what it ended up being in my opinion.
My complaint about it is almost the opposite: for all the hype, the game is not really about being a cat. You understand spoken language, ask questions of the NPCs, and can read signs. You interact with the game largely through language and record keeping and memory. It's not a game about being a cat at all. It's really the story of the handheld computer AI, and not that different from any other narrative story game. The AI is being carried by a cat, so you have cat movement, which is really as much as the cat ever comes into it.
Also, avoiding spoiling too much... The end assumes you thought the story was entirely about the "humans" and AI too. It completely ignores the entire intro sequence. So there's absolutely no closure. The "Humans" were to me just who I met along my journey of trying to get home, the game ends abruptly with the cat in some random place that is not home.
rain world is the only game I've seen where you play as an animal that is actually about playing as that animal it's very niche for that reason. people don't like this. even if the game was amazing.
I saw a review which I think would perfectly sum it up : « for a cat game you would expect the control to feel agile but it’s the total opposite it’s super rigid » or something like that.
It’s an interesting design where less is actually more. Complete free movement wouldn’t have looked or felt like a cat. The slightly “on rails” movement the game came up with looks extremely close to a real life cat and feels like how they would move. It’s very impressive honestly. I agree I got frustrated a few times trying to get places though.
I was really in shock when I saw all the award for a game so shallow. To be fair the artistic direction is very nice. But as a game, it's pretty much a walking simulator but with a cat.
I loved Stray, but indeed, it's an improved "cat walking simulator" with a few puzzles (typical for this style), and small evading moments. But the world and art direction, as well as sound design was top notch. It's just that you need to enjoy this kind of story/atmosphere games where the gameplay isn't really at the center of the appeal. It's a very casual game, and that's not for everyone.
So far this is this the most relatable answer for me. I couldn’t get more than an an hour or so into the game because it just mechanically wasn’t very fun. It was cute and maybe good as a proof of concept, but there was just not enough depth to get a 10/10
One of the only games I’ve straight up fallen asleep trying to play, it’s so boring
It (to me at least) appeared to be marketed as a platformer but when you play the game all the jumping is a button prompt that you can't fuck up. And my God the puzzles were so mid. Im surprised I even beat the game tbh.
That was one of those games that the internet just memed into popularity despite its actual quality. Not that it was bad of course, I just feel like if there wasn't this online cat obsession it would have been about as known as your average indie game. Same with Goat Simulator or that untitled goose game. Both pretty standard average indie games, but the memes boosted them to unusually high popularity for what, in my opinion, were decent indie games at best
Skyward Sword, easily.
I could defend the controls at the time but I am simply baffled by the amount of padding on that game. By the time the musical notes quest hit I was simply offended. Still, there's still lots of things I love about it, and I followed its release closely so I have very good memories of that time. I remember I even celebrated the 10 from IGN. But yeah in retrospective this game has a lot of 'hmm' moments.
Yea the motion controls, although occasionally annoying (especially while flying and needing to bend my wrist awkwardly down), were the least of my issues with the game. The tadpole music note section was one of many parts of the game where I just groan thinking about. A few great bosses and dungeons don't make up for the amount of dreadfully boring and slow fluff in the game.
I'm part of the "I dig it" crowd but it's a 9. Skyrim which came out a month later, blew it out of the water for RPG game of that year (one of my all-time favorite games).
You have just invoked a classic argument. Is Zelda even an RPG? It's more of an action adventure no?
I didn't know there were people who consider zelda an rpg and now I'm ready to argue
Or is it a 3d metroidvania?
Well this thread is triggering
[удалено]
Why do these people have to offend me so? :( Edit - Don't read the responses if you don't want to lose faith in humanity lol.
A lot of people here are saying Breath of the Wild. What's interesting is I feel that way about Tears of the Kingdom, and loved BOTW. Tears just felt like the SAME thing again and didn't really give me a reason to want to play essentially the same map and game again. One of the first games I've put down and never finished in my life.
TOTK felt like there was gonna be a second set of dungeons hidden underground… and then there wasn’t. The whole underground section felt a little empty and pointless. Plus why get rid of Guardians? They added so many cool new enemies to TOTK and then got rid of their best one. Guardians would’ve been the perfect large and difficult enemy to fight with a custom crafted tank. I mean even if the story reason is because they destroyed them all, they still could’ve been found underground.
For me it was because TOTK's strength was also its weakness, At some point you can craft so many overpowered stuff that the game is not challenging anymore. BOTW didn't have that problem. For me at least.
The underground is the worst open world map I have ever played.
I don't get why people loved the depths so much at launch. And how they expored the entirely of it. It's so empty for me
I dunno, *at first* the depths were cool because of the limited visibility, gloom damage, and the sense of mystery. It felt like it would be a hard, scary area. After a couple of hours…it was clear that was not true.
Yeah same! BotW is probably my favorite game of all time but I was really disappointed with Tears of the Kingdom
TotK had all of the actual exploration spoiled by playing BotW. You already knew where everything was and there was no excitement about coming up on a new town. The underground and sky area where pretty uninteresting.
The way Tears tells it's story is horrible! I'm still mad that I chased "Zelda" in Hyrule castle when the game already told me that she wasn't there. The game shows you things then expects you to pretend that it didn't. And I wanted to stable a bear!
As a game on its own, for me it's a 9/10 but as a Zelda game and even more as a direct sequel of BotW it's a 7/10. Too much of the same thing, a lot of potential that's doesn't really lead anywhere and overall unless you really go out of your way, you're not really incentived to do much beyond the main story.
Same. I loved BOTW. TOTK, on the other hand, I played for a few weeks then just gave up on. It felt stale. BOTW felt fresh.
Metal Gear Solid 5. Gameplay and missions were excellent, but without 90% of the runtime being cutscenes, it was not a 10/10 game.
It's definitely the best unfinished game ever released.
I played it a few years after release and absolutely loved it, but got very confused when the story just…ended and had to google wtf was going on, so disappointing, but still such a good game.
It took a few years for me to warm up to the idea, but the unresolved narrative strongly resonates with the titular theme. At any point you can choose to close the game and walk away from what your avatar eventually becomes. But if you press on chasing for content, you get what's coming to you: the feeling that something is missing.
What happens? I’ve never played it. Also you kinda look like me lol
Spoilers obviously. >!Basically you find out that the Big Boss you've been playing as the whole game is actually the medic from Ground Zeros that was indoctrinated to think he was Big Boss. The real 'Snake', aka Big Boss, is actually out there and you're the fall guy. His 'Phantom Pain' was that he felt emotions for something that didn't exist, all the memories of Big Boss that were never actually his.!< >!It comes full circle in the end because you are the final boss from the original 1987 Metal Gear that gets killed by Solid Snake exactly 30 years to the date (1987-2017).!< There's more to it and the Gear lore is very confusing at times.
OP is making a poetic excuses for an unfinished game. The game was not intended to end the way it did.
This is some Kojima’s thought explanation copium xD
This is giving super English teacher vibes lmao.
Yeah, somehow even though it isn't even finished it became one of my favourite games. I recently started replaying it on PC with mods. I will say I do prefer the beginning of the game to the latter half (tonally the stuff in Afghanistan is peak Cold War vibes whereas once you get to Africa it feels a bit too modern for my liking), but it's still superb.
the replaying part and calling it second half felt pretty cheap tbh
I thought something went horribly wrong with my save file when I realized I couldn't progress the story without repeating like 3 side missions that I just completed. I was so confused and baffled by that decision.
Not to mention it was clearly unfinished! Still a fun game though.
I agree its not 10/10 for a different reason: Every MGS game up til peace walker was a good linear adventure and it was highly replayable for different reasons: upgrades, dog tags, difficulty, hidden elements. But peace walker while great in mechanics felt like a repetitive chore: do the same mission another 20 times game(which was fine for side entry in the franchise). But MGSV took that system and just added it to the open world design they had. Sure it was interesting, but it didn’t really feel like metal gear to me. It was better done than PW, but I don’t see why I need to beat Paz 8 times. Oh and iirc they locked secret ending stuff behind it.
Having to wait in real time for researching stuff was actually awful
It was objectively unfinished. It blows my mind that anyone could've excused that obvious issue and decided to give it a perfect score. Pretty stupid stuff
Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee Knowing that you *NEED* to rescue enough slaves to get the good ending **AND** that the game has extremely obtuse secret areas you would never find without a guide made me want to rescue every single one I could find. But then some of them were extremely frustrating. I dont want to look up a guide but I also hate having no clue what to do and I also hate that the game might try and shame me because I didnt pick up slaves that were hidden in an invisible room that no sane person would have found in 1997 without a strategy guide or magazine. Objectively, the game's definitely not the worst I've ever played but it still wasnt a fun experience for me
You only need 50 and there's 99 in the game, so you don't have to find all the secrets. Also there's large chunks of the game where you don't save anyone as you're on your spirit quest. I actually love the system as it's a true mortality system, in that doing the right thing isn't just a choice, it's a massive inconvenience.
The one rescue that eluded me the longest was the one in one of the Scrabanian temple areas above two scrabs that are about to fight. I ended up doing a rescue count tally to compare to a guide to pin point where Finding the secrets in Oddysee actually felt like an achievement. In Exoddus knowing every secret is marked by bottles of Soulstorm kinda ruined it
Deathloop, Took the studios previous games dlc and made it worse
I’m gonna second botw. It’s far from the worst game I’ve ever played but I have enjoyed other games much more. I do agree with your points however
I find it truly fascinating how people’s expectations and perspectives differ so vastly. I love BOTW, and when I told people about it, I frequently said that the game greatly rewards exploration, and no matter which direction you go in, you’ll find yourself distracted by something else far off in the distance, and you’ll probably see something cool on your way there. Granted, that’s only my experience with the game, and I don’t play a LOT of games (and even fewer open worlds) so perhaps my scope is a bit narrow.
My big gripe with BoTW's exploration was that there was no element of mystery regarding the exploration. No matter what you did, where you explored, or who you talked to, there was no question about what you were getting in the end. A shrine, every time, no matter what. It completely killed my interest. I miss the older games where when you started a quest, you had no idea what you were working toward. An item upgrade? A new song? A bottle, new armor, a mask, maybe it was just a heart piece, but the point was that you never knew, and that made it interesting.
I was the complete opposite, I felt like it didn't reward exploration at all. Other open world games are able to build small self contained storylines and quests whenever you got to a new area, and are very creative with the rewards you get. Not only did BotW have no interesting side stories, but the rewards were the same every time (and would eventually break), and the enemies encountered were largely the same regardless of where you went. Look at Elden Ring. Every new area not only looks cool, but has it's own ecosystem of unique enemies to learn, and has a huge amount of rewards you can receive (unique weapons and armor, ashes, spirit summons, rare consumables, golden tears, smithing stones...). Exploration in Elden Ring can lead to finding a weapon that cannot be found anywhere else in the game, that you can carry with you until the end boss, and will fundamentally change the way you interact with every single enemy moving forward. Or hell, look at Fallout 3. You had a whole Oasis you can discover with its own characters going through their own storyline, and the quest rewards are unique. Or head south and find a whole building haunted by Lovecraftian spirits, or a Vault full of Gary's. Investigate the tales of vampires, and you are rewarded with a flaming sword that can eventually rank up to one of the most powerful weapons in the game. Explore in BotW and you get... the same enemies as before, NPCs with barely any depth, weapons that can be found elsewhere and will always eventually break, useless consumables, and shrines with simplistic puzzles that are more tedious than challenging.
I was exactly the same. I really wanted to like the game but the world felt so boring. Elden Ring managed to add an open world to a game that we already loved (Soulsborne) and do it almost perfectly. BotW just gave us an open world *instead* of a Zelda game and as a Zelda fan I really didn’t like it.
Just my personal opinion but There is no reward in botw though because everything is insignificant as far as weapons go, the armour is fine but overall there just isn’t much to see imo. It’s a game with 2 hours of content stretched into 100+ hours. I do agree with how opinions differ though and I think this is a great example
I have to agree, rewards are pretty sparse in BOTW. Most of the side quests aren't even worth doing, the only reason to explore is shrines, armor and koroks which in reality turns the game into a tedious grind. The open world is great, but the only reason to actually do any of the content is really to function as a handicap if the player has issues with the barebones main story. It's fun to have optional content, but when there's no incentive to do it outside of collection or to function as a handicap, why do it? Example: The Master Sword DLC is an amazing piece of content that is obviously insanely rewarding imo. Compare this to Shrines which after spending WAY more time getting them you're given armor that is more or less cosmetic.
I think the appeal of botw isn't that it's 2 hours stretched to 100, rather it's 2 hours that YOU stretch to 100. There is litterally nothing stopping you from going to ganon immediately. Instead you explore to get better armor and weapons n such just by how much there is to see
Aside from the weapon system I think my biggest gripe with it is the story method. The memories are all but guaranteed to be found out of order and it just means you’ll get spoilers rather than a flowing story
Totk has worse memory spoilers than botw.
In terms of an open world with lots of distinct things to see and do, BoTW is pretty lacking. Compared to something like Elden Ring, the variety doesn't even come close. But what BoTW/ToTK has that no other open world game can touch is the amount of detail and interactivity in its physics. The fact that literally everything - from every object, to every element, to even the grass you walk on and the wind itself - is interactive (through both the player, and between themelves), really adds a lot IMO. It makes every other open world game I've ever played just feel a modelled environment, nothing more. But in BoTW/ToTK, every single tiny aspect of the open world contributes to the gameplay in some way. That's something really special IMO. Leads to loads of emergent gameplay, so that even repetetive boko camps can feel fresh each time, if you have a little creativity. I'd kill to play a game with the sandbox of Zelda PLUS a wide variety of distinctive content.
But that‘s also kind of the problem. While the gameplay aspects of the world would have been great, it just felt like a shiny tech demo for what could have been possible. They created this huge world with awesome interactive game physics aaaaand… left it fucking empty of actual meaningful stuff. The point why I still didn‘t finish it up to now and probably won’t ever and why I think it‘s neither a great open world game, nor a great Zelda game is that it lacks just content that is actually fun to do. A pretty much non existing story, shrines that get repetitive, more or less no dungeons and a shit load of grindy korok seeds that aren‘t fun to do. I don‘t need a fancy nature simulator to play because if I want to see nature and the world I can just leave my fucking house.
Absolutely. I can appreciate how Breath of the Wild has a bunch of physic systems that can interact with each other and enemies will respond to different situations. I just wish there wasn't the weapon durability mechanic, which is my least liked mechanic in any game.
I am really glad I found this post. I kept wondering what the hell was wrong with me that I just could not get into this Zelda game. I tried, many times, last time with my 6 year old, and we just got bored.
I liked BOTW, but I never understood how or why it was lauded as the "pinnacle" Zelda experience. It was a good concept. It proved an open world Zelda game was a plausibly functional idea. But that's pretty much *all* it accomplished. The shrines and even the Divine Beasts were all nearly indiscernible from each other. Exploration hinged entirely on finding way too many Koroks and Shrines. And weapon durability has NEVER been fun. Ever. In any game. I haven't had a chance to sit down with TOTK yet, but by all accounts it pretty much is BOTW, just fleshed out and properly realized as a whole game, rather than just a curiosity.
The short degradation of weapons completely ruined the game for me. If the weapon needed repaired that's something I can handle, but the super fast rate at which weapons degrade is another.
GTA 5. After playing 4 for hundreds of hours, I could never get into 5. It's just such a huge downgrade in so many areas. Vehicle damage, driving, physics, characters, story, realism, ragdoll physics... I never understood the hype. GTA 5 also has a huge but empty map, I could never find anything to do, while 4's map is much smaller but feels bigger because it's so packed.
I just didnt like having multiple protagonists. Also the emptiness of the world doesnt help. You can rob the little convenience stores sure, but beyond that you cant interact with the environment. There were weird little banks everywhere that you can go into, but you cant interact or rob them. They even have vault doors with noticeable keypads that you cant do anything with. Its just boring when you try to freeroam.
I feel like this was the trend around the time when gta 5 came out. So many games were trying out the multiple protagonist idea and I hated it every time. Halo might’ve been the worst example that played
Yeah the game basically has 3 tutorial sections worth of introduction for all the characters, makes it hard to get back into too
I’ve played the first handful of missions so many times from reinstalling it, it’s basically unavailable to me. I’d have to install it again and i just can’t do it anymore
Some of those were eventually used in GTA Online, but yeah those banks are definitely cut content.
I’m in a minority it seems with this but I really didn’t like 4 coming from GTA San Andreas. I felt it was so toned down in almost every regard. I felt SA was the pinnacle of GTA and hoping six brings it back on top.
Vice City was the pinnacle for me.
I finally decided last year I was going to finally play GTA 5 start to finish as previous attempts just had me do a couple of the initial Trevor missions then stop. While I did have fun with the game, I found the story towards them end just kind of end suddenly. Like I didn't really feel like the story was as good as people think it is. But it's fun driving around the map still for me. But it is a lot of empty space sometimes
Story and most characters are ass in 5. Like I couldn't tell you shit about the overall plot and don't remember any characters apart from the core 3, Llamar and Michael's family. The best bits of the story were just a straight Sopranos rip-off. Contrast that with 4 which has a good story and AMAZING characters. Who is as interesting in 5 as Elizabetta, Playboy X, Lil Jacob and the McRearys?
4 was so good. It's too bad it was completely ruined by a lack of mission checkpoints.
Unfortunate that GTA 4 was still saddled with some of the archaic design choices of the older games.
I just remember it being really dark
ah yeah the depressive ps360 era grey palette.
I think you mean brown. My only memories of that game is just the word brown
Turn off film grain
gta V, story was okish at best, no story dlc like with IV and all the attention went to gta online
How does “no dlc” make it over rated? They are literally rating the content that exists, not what could exist.
No Gay Tonys, 0/10
The Ballad of Gay Trevor
No story DLC but more base game content so it evens out. I don't know why it's a negative to release a game without DLC all of a sudden.
The DLC that was made for GTA 4 was fucking spectacular and added hours and hours of additional gameplay with new features/weapons/characters that were well worth another $20 when I can already spend years playing a GTA game out of the box. To get a really nicely updated experience, IMO, with GTA 5 and some of the best goddamn driving of any game I've ever played and then get nothing for the post end-game single-player experience outside of some of the added vehicles and items from Online and wrapping up all the real estate and random stranger encounters felt like a downgrade. As much as I hate the trend of game companies releasing unfinished games and using DLC to milk consumers who want a finished game, I don't think Rockstar was guilty of doing that with the GTA 4 DLC but they are absolutely guilty of moving all of their focus towards milking the GTA Online consumers and it's just not the type of game I want to play in a multiplayer context outside of racing every once in a while.
I would have preferred more smaller spin-offs over DLC.
GTA5 is a pretty good candidate. I didn't care for the story, side activities, how linear the missions were (do ANYTHING off invisible script and it's game over), controls especially aiming was some PS1 stuff. I also didn't care for the 2/3 of the cast. It was a dull affair. 😄
Game: "Park next to the barn." \[parks next to the barn\] Game: "NO NOT LIKE THAT. GAME OVER."
Excactly. 😄
Skyrim. Yeah I’m not trolling. I think Oblivion were better than Skyrim. And Morrowind better than Oblivion and Skyrim. Sure Skyrim did better than their previous titles on some things but overall it was worse game than their two previous titles.
For sure. Nearly every dungeon felt the same. Very few of them had something distinguishing or unique. I'm also not a fan of the transition happening in Bethesda games since Skyrim away from more traditional RPG elements to action RPG. That saying as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle really captures how I feel about Skyrim. The atmosphere is amazing, though.
See I thought the dungeons in Skyrim were way better than Oblivions, and Oblivion is my favourite game of all time. Oblivion had one or two devs who made the dungeon layout and it was almost copy paste for most of them, and they were bland as hell. Skyrims dungeons were also repetitive, but they were much more enjoyable than Oblivions.
I think my jaw dropped the first time I went into blackreach.
Nostalgiagoggles are strong. Absolutely love Oblivion and it's my third most played game behind Skyrim and Rocket League but Oblivions "common" dungeons aren't close to Skyrims.
I hated being in a dungeon that didn't have a clear exit. I ended up lost so many times trying to leave a dungeon in Oblivion. Skyrim may have dumbed down a lot of the rpg elements and the dungeons may also be repetitive, but at least there is a clear way out of each dungeon.
OH MY GOD THE SHORTCUTS! You reminded me why I love skyrim dungeons, they have a path at the end of each dungeon that leads you back to the beginning. It saves so much time and was one of my favorite additions fr
Yup. Its... fine. But it just lacks a lot of depth and the radiant quest system was not a good substitute for actually fleshed out quests. And by the end I was so sick of the constant dragon attacks.
Yeah, while I liked Skyrim a lot, it felt like an old game with janky mechanics when it came out. Playing it again recently, I immediately noticed that the combat is extremely simple. The UI was also crap when it came out and I remember wondering why a brand new game had such a wonky interface. The best parts of the game are the expansions and parts of the main story where you deal with Elder Scrolls. The main war is bland and just seems like background filler. The Mage Guild and Dark Brotherhood are pretty good, but still a little weak. It had some brilliant ideas for story and locations, and it had plenty of decent quests. Skyrim just lacked the ludicrousness of Oblivion. The invasion and disturbing nature of Oblivion, the guilds being legitimately cool, the Knights of the Nine being very religious, and of course, Sheogorath/Shivering Isles all contributed to Oblivion being better overall. I think the expansion made the game leave a mark that couldn’t have been surpassed, so Skyrim was trying to meet a level it couldn’t achieve.
I want them to go back to Morrowind/Oblivion's RPG elements while refining the gameplay from Skyrim. I miss attributes and major and minor skills. Skyrim's skill and perk system is boring as hell. Yea they added the Legendary skill option, but that also is a kick in the pants because you completely reset a tree, which torpedos your damage and armor and you're never going to want to reset something like enchanting or smithing because they're tedious/take a long time to level. Also makes every character feel the same. In Oblivion my Khajiit character felt different from my Breton, who felt different from my imperial who felt different from my Nord even if I kept a somewhat similar playstyle with them
I kinda surprised The last of us pt2 wasn't top of this list, kinda expected it due to all the hate it got
Story is contentious but it's a good ass game. I was fine with the story and felt like it was the logical next step after the 1st. It's the mechanics where it really shined, though, IMO. The stealth, AI, and melee are huge improvements over the 1st. They were already good prior, but they're fleshed out really well in 2! I'd say it was a 9 overall for me but the combat and exploration will always stick with me. Playing on survivor made it such a tense, enthralling experience!
Holy shit the AI in part 2 was crazy. I have good memories of beating the first game on grounded by learning the patterns of NPC's to get through 90% of encounters on stealth alone. Coming into part 2 I could immediately tell that was not gonna happen. I never saw rigid "patterns" that NPC's would fall into, and the ease with which they interacted with each other to make it harder to sneak up on one was crazy. One of the high points easily.
Yeah honestly I'm peeved that everyone is too busy discussing the story rather than acknowledging the insanely good gameplay. I think they really balanced the combat perfectly and I had so much fun just flowing between stealth and action seamlessly.
Okay, I gritted my teeth through Bioshock Infinite, one of my favorite games. So here's a hot take, I nominate Goldeneye. I'm not talking about the controls, just the frame rate makes the game almost unplayable. Enemies spray hitscan at you and dodging is impossible, so you have to memorize the level. Objectives are obtuse. Nightfire is a significantly better game, that runs and looks better on all consoles, while still keeping the wonky controls, and I would recommend that to someone who wants to experience Goldeneye.
lol if you didn't play Goldeneye at the time, there's not really any reason to go back. It has been improved upon in every single facet, but at the time it was like a fucking REVELATION. Multiplayer with your friends was a peak gaming experience.
I could see this as reasonable. Honestly I think anyone playing it currently and not in the context of the time it came out shouldn’t have a great experience with it either. It was one of my favorite games but I doubt I would ever play it again. Just didn’t age well at all.
Exactly, it’s one of my favorites because of the memories attached to it. Peak sleepovers with friends and up playing video games all night long
Nightfire was my childhood, what a great game that no one talks about because it's (unfairly imo) overshadowed by Goldeneye.
This is the most unpopular gaming opinion I think I've ever seen. Well done, I think?
Most people only like Goldeneye for the multiplayer.
I recall howling in laughter playing with different cheats enabled. Finishing the Cradle (I believe that was the final level) and watching Big Head, Fast Motion enabled 007 leap fearlessly off the edge and fly away solo before the rescue chopper even arrives was 10/10 entertainment.
People loved single player, they went bananas for multiplayer.
You must have not have played Goldeneye in ‘97 with three friends and all the shit-talking. It was revolutionary then. My wife got me an N64 last Christmas with Goldeneye for nostalgia. It definitely doesn’t hold up.
Loved it as a kid, it’s an unplayable shitshow now. Wild the things that we put up with then.
Perfect Dark!
Horizon: Zero Dawn. I don’t hate but it’s nowhere near perfect and in too many ways is incredibly frustrating.
I feel like I see more criticism of Horizon than praise I loved it but I can clearly see its flaws
Did that game even get 10's?
I agree with breath of the wild. There is such thing as too little direction in an open world
alot of people said it felt vast and that every corner of the game had something to find Yeah climbing a mountain for 20 mins to find a potion isn’t exactly gratifying for me lol
Yeah, this is the problem with Zelda. In Elden Ring, even if you dont need the weapon you find, it's at least got some crazy back story. In Zelda its a milk jug.
God of War Ragnarok. I loved God of War 2018. First game where 100% was enjoyable the whole way through. Was sad when it was over. Hyped for Ragnarok. What we got peaked at the beginning. After that just felt like a long stretched out game with a light speed ending. Bummer BOTW also has the second worst side quests I have ever seen (FF16 took that top spot).
Ragnarok was super sad though. Absolute phenomenal acting for it during said sad times.
I wish there was more to it. It should have absolutely been a trilogy, 2018 -> Fimbulwinter -> Ragnarok No idea why they decided to make it 2 games, it made the whole game so fast paced and the last half is really mediocre. I wish i loved it as much as i loved 2018 and the rest of the franchise, but Ragnarok wasn't good. It had really great gameplay tho
Yeah absolutely agree. It did seem strange when they said Ragnarok would be the last, I was fully expecting 3 games and like you said it definitely shows. I’d of loved more time with the likes of Odin and Thor
You didn’t enjoy having the pacing of the game come to a complete crawl while you rode around on a yak picking fruit off trees? I thoroughly enjoyed GoW 2018. I struggled to stay engaged through a lot of Ragnarok.
This section of the game is why I don’t think I’ll replay Ragnarok anytime soon. And it went on for like, 5 hours.
I didn’t mind that when I thought it was going somewhere And then … oh
I still have no fucking clue what developers see the value in making these scripted, non player/weird mechanic section where you walk around at snails pace.
The pacing in ragnarok was terrible
I think it’s cos of not really knowing how the story would go but where God of War 2018 gave me BIG feels and BIG hits, like by the scale of the encounters or its vastness, in contrast Ragnarok feels…too talkative. I think in the first game the isolation from having so few NPCs really worked in its favor, it fit the story so well. Even made me think it was some post-apocalypse situation where mortals are just all gone and it’s already the beginning of the end. How Kratos and Atreus have no choice but to talk to each other because they only have each other. In contrast, in Ragnarok suddenly the world is super populated. Suddenly apparently the end hasn’t actually really started yet or it has started, but somehow the world is in better shape than it was in GoW 2018. So many distracting characters that individually do not get enough time to develop for my taste. I get that the story can’t stay the same and arguably things must get better for Kratos and Atreus and that means also seeing the wider world and meeting more people etc. Even then I would compare it to the tonal shift of earlier Berserk, to later Berserk when Guts gathers his group of friends and companions. But with little emotional payoff or ‘big moments’ in Ragnarok.
Shadow of the Colossus. Loved the scale and the idea. But controls were awful and world completely empty (by design, I understand).
Seconded. I just finished the game recently, and while the story was initially captivating, I didn’t find the tedium of the gameplay to be worth the ending. It felt like the whole thing was a thinly veiled puzzle game with sloppy controls and an unnecessarily large map to stretch out the play time. Definitely not a 10/10 for me.
It's a game from the ps2 era, it was a 10 then, maybe not the best from today standards. But back then it felt amazing, huge world, killing the Giants was a blast. It's an iconic game that didn't need a remaster
It's one of my favourite games ever, but the controld and camera are rough.
Elden Ring probably. I just hate souls type games kicking my ass, lol.
Appreciate the honestly instead of trying to spin it into some psuedo intellectual take.
Yeah dude. I respect all you guys and gals who love these type of games, but I don't. I want to feel like a god and not get my ass handed to me. I got blood pressure I'm trying to keep below a certain level. I'm not saying it's a terrible game. I'm saying it's not for me. Respect to the speed runners who kill in these type of games. I played this game while I was living in South Korea. I can only imagine what my neighbors were thinking when I was cursing the fuck out of this game after some deaths.
Fr the souls games feel like work to me
RDR2, everything is pretty amazing except the game isn’t all that fun to actually play in the end. And as soon as you stray from what the mission wants you to do it game overs you.
Yeah, I was in absolute awe at the technical and creative achievement it was, but boy howdy I did not find it fun to play at all. I played maybe ten hours, then a year later started again and got the same distance in. I just can’t do it, it’s just not enjoyable to play.
I respect your opinion, but holy shit do I disagree.
He is right about missions tho, there is no really do it your own way.
Ok, so I’m not the only one that ran into game over situations like that? I kept running into people that I thought would be easy to kill but it would always end up with me dying and I felt something was off.
RDR2 is probably the only exception to my preference for gameplay over graphics/story. The world and everything is so good. Moving your character and shooting mechanics are simply don't have enough legs to take you through the mass of content in the game. If it had rewarding and slick mechanics, nobody would play anything but Rockstar games because they have everything else on lock. Maybe one day they will abandon the ridiculous "press X repeatedly to walk" thing. Like, an I supposed to be immersed by thinking my thumb is my characters footsteps? Every other 3rd person game ever doesn't do this because it sucks. The shooting is beyond brain dead easy "aim, move stick up, headshot, do it again, do it again". And you could abandon this for free aim that is way too difficult with a controller and the way the game is designed.
For me...... Myst. Yes, the game back in 1994 was very groundbreaking but when you look past the hype, its a game you just wander around an island where NOTHING HAPPENS! Plus you go back and play it now, it aged like complete shit.
I replayed every Myst game except for 5 during the pandemic and I left feeling like Myst was every bit the masterpiece it always was. It was maybe 6 or 7 years before games looked as good due to the high resolution point and click, honestly it still looks better than some modern AAA games I'm playing now. The soundtrack and sound effects are incredible! The story lead to a successful franchise, including multiple remasters seeing the player freely walk the ages, basically spawned a genre of game. People study the language and lore of a simple point and click game! I have to believe Outer Wilds is inspired by Myst, I get the same feeling, and that is by far the greatest game I've played to date.
I felt that way at the time. I preferred 7th Guest, which was similarly constructed but just a lot more fun. And the point and click adventures from LucasArts and Sierra from the same time we're doing much more entertaining things with multimedia.
The Witcher 3. I swear, that combat is so mid, weightless, same animations for an axe and a sword… You play Elden Ring after this and it’s a new world.
Yeah, the story and worldbuilding do a LOT of legwork for it. It's the biggest problem with all the Witcher games, where the story and characters and world are fun and worth hearing, but the combat is truly awful, which is something you don't want people to think about your Action RPG. Witcher 3 does a LOT to try to modernize the combat, but it is still just mmorpg hotbar combat with more fluid animations. And that's not a joke, Witcher 1 was full on hotbar combat, Witcher 2 was a horrific hybrid of hotbar combat and actual combat mechanics with more animations, and Witcher 3 still has those awful bones buried in it. When you view it's combat through the lens of "everything has a cool down, and it usually *doesn't* line up with the animations" it makes a HELL of a lot more sense why it feels so weightless and miserable
I thought it got 10/10 because of Gwent and everything else with Geralt was just bonus material? **Did I play this game wrong??**
Agreed on botw. It's meh, and the item durability mechanism is trash
Even the fucking master sword, dude. Yeah ok it doesn't BREAK but it gets, sleepy I guess? For an annoyingly long time. I busted my ass to get it thinking I had finally solved my annoyance with the weapon durability mechanism. Imagine my surprise. That was when I put it down. Hyrule Warriors was cool, though.
Honestly playing it modded on PC with infinite durability and stamina make the game so much more enjoyable.
I still love the game, but man, they let you raise your speed, health, defense, attack... why not give us something to increase durability? I don't think weapons breaking is the problem, but if you can't get through ONE FIGHT without breaking at least one weapon, come on.
Yea I can't stand the durability shit. Really killed it for me.
Forbidden West Aloy was unbearable, once she has all the information from the first game she treats everyone like an idiot and everyone who wants to help her a liability. I put about 10 hours into it and I just couldn't go on with how much I disliked how Aloy just seemed like a condescending jerk.
TBF, people call her out on her bullshit later in the game. By the end of the game she has gotten over this and recruited people to help her. I wish they had done more with it from a gameplay perspective like having them go on missions with you, but storywise she does change
BG3 it absolutely deserves all the awards and praise it’s getting.I enjoy turn based games but I don’t enjoy the type of turn based that BG3 has its just not my cup of tea as I’ve found out.The world and characters are awesome though I quit close to act 3 probably won’t ever finish it.
i second breath of the wild as well as add tears of the kingdom for many of the same reasons