Unpopular Video Game Opinions

[JS19]

I don't believe that there's as big of a difference as you think. Most of the time, in 3D games like OoT, you're attacking an enemy who's on the same plane as you (i.e. not above you or below you). That plane (usually, the ground) is 2D. The perspective may be in 3D, but you're still controlling your character on a 2D plane. A 3D game like OoT pointing you towards the enemy really isn't that different than the idea that a 2D game could, similarly, point you toward the enemy.

Saying they're in the same plane as your view and that plane is 2D, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Just because you can see the enemy in the same area, doesn't mean they will stay there. Boss patterns in 3D games can easily take advantage of moving away from your perspective, especially with the player having access to the added analog range, as opposed to the 8-directional range of a D-Pad. Not to mention, just because you're in the ground, doesn't mean you're only moving left-right as expected in a 2D game, you could be moving north/south/east/west in any direction.

It does more than just focus the camera on a target. It also faces your character towards that target. Unless you're too far away or the target dodges, your attack will land, all without requiring any aim on your part. I just think that aim should be important in 3D combat or else it's not really 3D combat. Z-targeting reduces 3D combat almost to 2D combat, since it takes away the challenge of facing the enemy, something which rarely was an issue in 2D games. That is, after all, essentially why it was invented: to make 3D combat simpler and more familiar to gamers who, at the time, were used to 2D combat.

Saying that Z-targeting reduces combat to 2D is disregarding how fight patterns and boss battles can easily change this. Like I said, just because you have Z-targeting, doesn't mean your attacks will hit. There are two good examples to counter your point. Take Dark Link in OOT for instance, you have a 3D perspective, and Dark Link's movement (as far as where he appears in the map) is semi-unpredictable. He can appear behind the player, in front, etc. Furthermore, with Z-Target, Dark Link knows how to evade your moves so it's not simply an easy way to win as you still have to exploit timely defensive lapses. You don't even have the same limitations in 2D combat since the player can view the front, back, up, down directions easily without having to change their perspective. To take a comparable, Dark Link in Zelda II is also similarly difficult to the fight in OOT, but you never have to worry about added viewpoints and perspectives in 3D. All you have to worry about is finding timely exploits. In both cases, aiming your attacks aren't guaranteed hits due to both Dark Links knowing how to evade well.

For the Zelda debate, check this video.

Sequelitis - ZELDA: A Link to the Past vs. Ocarina of Time

Language is NSFW.

*Removed the link because I forgot how much swearing was in it.

Hard to take Arin seriously when he does stupidity like this:

His playthroughs of 3D games tell me he has no spatial awareness, and has a very hyper and undetailed approach to 3D games. Over time, his Sequelitis videos (particuarly OOT) have aged terribly and have very faulty logic to them.

 

[Carolinas Identity*]

I have no idea why Uncharted is popular

 

[ArGarBarGar]

If you want to see how well Arin plays games, just check out his Dead Rising run.

[spoil]He screws around so often and doesn't bother actually saving people he is underleveled for the final challenges and ends up getting completely destroyed over and over. Couple that with his lack of understanding of basic gameplay mechanics (the guys with guns will shoot you if you run out in the open), and you have Arin in a nutshell.[/spoil]

He plays games for making funny moments happen. And they aren't even that funny.

 

[Carolinas Identity*]

The "No Russian" level of Modern Warfare 2 was good and while it made me feel dirty as a person to play it, seemed like a logical add in to the game plot wise, and was handled well. It was violent to the extreme, without being senseless imo.

 

[Osprey]

But you just finished comparing it to megaman saying that you never needed it there, but you were always facing the enemy in megaman since you're on a 2d plane, how can you want the challenge of facing the direction of the enemy and at the same time not want it?

I was trying to get you to use your imagination of how 2D games might've been redesigned so that auto-targeting would've been useful. Mega Man was probably a bad example to that end. Metroid (in which you could already fire in a full arc from straight ahead to straight up) or a ship shooter like Gradius (if you imagine that you could rotate your ship like Asteroids) would've been better examples.

The "No Russian" level of Modern Warfare 2 was good and while it made me feel dirty as a person to play it, seemed like a logical add in to the game plot wise, and was handled well. It was violent to the extreme, without being senseless imo.

Is that the level in which you mow down innocent people in an airline terminal? I played that game for the first time just last month and that mission shocked me. I would expect that to be in a Postal game, in which you're playing as an evil person, not a major, AAA, CoD game, in which you're playing the good guy and good values are meant to be promoted. I don't know why there wasn't more controversy. Seemingly, participating in the murder of countless innocent people in a public place as a requirement for beating the game gets a pass, but arms are taken up over the fact that an optional ("Hot Coffee") mod added to a different game allows a clothed sex mini-game. It also felt very unbelievable to me that an undercover special forces soldier would participate in that just to not blow his cover. Finally, you say that it wasn't senseless, but it sure felt that way to me with how the mission ended (with the team leader killing you because he knew all along that you were an undercover spy, so you ended up helping him kill innocents for absolutely no good end).

 

[Carolinas Identity*]

I was trying to get you to use your imagination of how 2D games might've been redesigned so that auto-targeting would've been useful. Mega Man was probably a bad example to that end. Metroid (in which you could already fire in a full arc from straight ahead to straight up) or a ship shooter like Gradius (if you imagine that you could rotate your ship like Asteroids) would've been better examples.



Is that the level in which you mow down innocent people in an airline terminal? I played that game for the first time just last month and that mission shocked me. I would expect that from a Postal sequel, not from a major AAA CoD game. I don't know why there wasn't more controversy. Seemingly, required murdering of countless innocent people in a public place gets a pass, but we get up in arms over the fact that a ("hot coffee") mod added to a different game allows showing a crude, censored sex scene. It also felt very unbelievable to me that an undercover special forces soldier would participate in that just to not blow his cover. Finally, you say that it wasn't senseless, but it sure felt that way to me with how the mission ends (with the team leader killing you because he knew all along that you were an undercover spy, so you ended up helping him kill innocents for absolutely no good end).

Are you really surprised by this? Ever been to a theatre in the past 20 years? Blowing up//mutilating//murdering people in inventive and grotesque ways, is, by in large fine. But you show a female nipple, even if done tastefully?

NC-17

Also, that GTA mod is ****ing hilarious

 

[RandV]

My unpopular opinion is that "z-targeting" is the devil. It takes away the concept of aim and puts training wheels on combat. Where's the challenge in combat if you just target an enemy by pressing a button and all of your attacks magically land without you needing to be the least bit skilled at aiming?

We didn't have z-targeting on the NES or SNES. Imagine how much easier those games would've been if they'd held our hand by making our attacks (say, our Mega Man blaster shots) automatically hit whatever we wanted. We actually had to <gasp> aim.

Z-targeting isn't a feature that should be praised, IMO. Perhaps 3D combat was a chore beforehand, but that doesn't mean that greatly dumbing it down for the least skilled of gamers was the best answer for it that could've been dreamed up and that it should still be used nearly 20 years later.

I think you're looking at it wrong. First factor is analogue movement: does your character move in the direction you press, or is up forward and down back? Second is more about gameplay, does the player character rely on the use of a shield?

OoT used analogue directional movement, same as Mario 64. However since Link uses a shield, it would be kind of awkward if backing away from an enemy exposed your back for a hit. They could have made it so that holding the shield up switches you to forward/back/sidestep movement, which z-targeting does, but that's still awkward if enemies are moving around you and you have to keep dropping the shield to re-orientate yourself.

Which gets back to the original point I made, OoT gets credit for doing the innovation first, but it's nothing as grand as something like an iPhone. Z-targeting was an invention of necessity that was going to happen one way or another. In a 3D environment the camera is a programmable game object that can be attached to things or moved around. In OoT it's just a simple matter of binding the perspective to a moving object and remapping the controls when engaged. The real groundwork for the innovation was probably done already in Mario 64.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

Is that the level in which you mow down innocent people in an airline terminal? I played that game for the first time just last month and that mission shocked me. I would expect that to be in a Postal game, in which you're playing as an evil person, not a major, AAA, CoD game, in which you're playing the good guy and good values are meant to be promoted. I don't know why there wasn't more controversy. Seemingly, participating in the murder of countless innocent people in a public place as a requirement for beating the game gets a pass, but arms are taken up over the fact that an optional ("Hot Coffee") mod added to a different game allows a clothed sex mini-game. It also felt very unbelievable to me that an undercover special forces soldier would participate in that just to not blow his cover. Finally, you say that it wasn't senseless, but it sure felt that way to me with how the mission ended (with the team leader killing you because he knew all along that you were an undercover spy, so you ended up helping him kill innocents for absolutely no good end).

Not only do you not have to kill anyone in that level, but the entire point of that level was to jump off of the next stage of the plot. "No Russian" is said because Makarov is setting you and the American government up. AND you have the option to skip the level entirely due to its content.

I would say the inclusion was gratuitous and could have been done better, but it did have a place in the plot. And people absolutely did take an issue with that level.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Call_of_Duty:_Modern_Warfare_2

Prior to the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, footage taken from the "No Russian" level was leaked on the Internet.[5] Though some journalists were cautious towards the level's content, they decided to wait until they could actually play the level to judge its merits.[3][6][7] After the game's release, "No Russian" was largely criticized for allowing players to partake in a terrorist attack. Vince Horiuchi of The Salt Lake Tribune felt that the level was in poor taste following the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, and questioned why the level couldn't have been told through a non-interactive cutscene.[8] Marc Cieslak of BBC News was saddened by "No Russian", as he felt it disproved his theory that the video game industry had "grown up".[9] Several prominent British religious leaders condemned "No Russian": Alexander Goldberg of the London Jewish Forum was worried that children would play the level; Fazan Mohammed of the British Muslim Forum described the level as an intimate experience of enacting terrorism; and Stephen Lowe, the retired Bishop of Hulme, felt that the level was "sickening".[10] Due to the graphic content featured in "No Russian", Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 was subject to censorship in international versions of the game, including the entire removal of the level from the Russian version

 

[Osprey]

I think you're looking at it wrong. First factor is analogue movement: does your character move in the direction you press, or is up forward and down back? Second is more about gameplay, does the player character rely on the use of a shield?

OoT used analogue directional movement, same as Mario 64. However since Link uses a shield, it would be kind of awkward if backing away from an enemy exposed your back for a hit. They could have made it so that holding the shield up switches you to forward/back/sidestep movement, which z-targeting does, but that's still awkward if enemies are moving around you and you have to keep dropping the shield to re-orientate yourself.

I'm really not trying to argue the merits of z-targeting in OoT, since I can grant that controllers at the time were not very suitable for 3D games, so games like OoT had to come up with tricks to make them more playable. I'm more taking issue with the seeming suggestion that it's still a great feature now that controllers and game control, in general, have greatly improved. Modern controllers have far more buttons, as well as dual sticks, allowing for the kind of control that you couldn't achieve without tricks in those early 3D games. You can actually have separate controls for rotating and sidestepping now, so games no longer have to choose one or the other for their control schemes or implement modes to switch between them. Z-targeting should no longer be needed, IMO, because you can rotate to face the target and you can sidestep to dodge its attacks, all without having to hold down a button to do the auto-rotation for you. If people still want it, anyways, since it's simplifies combat, then I guess that that's a matter of taste, but it's not to my taste.

Not only do you not have to kill anyone in that level, but the entire point of that level was to jump off of the next stage of the plot. "No Russian" is said because Makarov is setting you and the American government up. AND you have the option to skip the level entirely due to its content.

I would say the inclusion was gratuitous and could have been done better, but it did have a place in the plot. And people absolutely did take an issue with that level.

I understand how it played into the plot. A much better way to have used it to further the plot, though, would've been to have had you (your character) try to stop the Russians from the attack or from getting away, inevitably failing and getting blamed because people think that, being a member of the gang, you were a participant. If the game designers had done something like that, the plot would've been advanced exactly the same way, yet gamers wouldn't have felt dirty about it and all of the criticisms and controversy would've never materialized.

On your last point, I wasn't suggesting that there wasn't any controversy. I was just reflecting on how I remember hearing all about the Hot Coffee mod for GTA: San Andreas, even though I hadn't ever played any GTA game at that point, yet don't recall the controversy over this game in a series that I had played a lot of. Maybe I was living under a rock, but one seemed to cause a much bigger stir than the other, which is all that I was saying.

 

[ArGarBarGar]

I think that last point is anecdotal. I remember it being a controversial issue.

 

[aleshemsky83]

There was a huge controversy. I'm pretty sure the esrb got overhauled after it because it became a big thing with American politicians since the mod was actually content the developers made and took out of the game.

 

[Carolinas Identity*]

There was a huge controversy. I'm pretty sure the esrb got overhauled after it because it became a big thing with American politicians since the mod was actually content the developers made and took out of the game.

jack thompson going on an uninformed, idiotic rant does not mean "huge controversy"

 

[tmurfin]

Am I the only one who didn't even blink when I played "No Russian"?? , I realized it was a video game, and I had done muuuuuch worst things on GTA and any other open world game for that matter. Seeing people say they were "shocked" is what shocks me

 

[Osprey]

I think that last point is anecdotal. I remember it being a controversial issue.

Again, I didn't say that it wasn't controversial. I was comparing the degree that it was to another controversy. If you believe that this and "Hot Coffee" both created the same degree of controversy, that's fine and you might even be right, but I'm not sure how you're going to support that without anecdotes of your own.

Am I the only one who didn't even blink when I played "No Russian"?? , I realized it was a video game, and I had done muuuuuch worst things on GTA and any other open world game for that matter. Seeing people say they were "shocked" is what shocks me

There's a difference between giving you the option to do bad things to innocents and forcing you to watch and encouraging you to participate in them. The fact that you or I have done disturbing things in games out of choice doesn't mean that everyone should be forced to participate in them as part of the actual mission.

Also, I thought that I clarified, but I was only "shocked" that it came out of nowhere in a game series that's always been about killing enemy combatants. As I said, if it had been a Postal game, such a mission wouldn't have been shocking at all, since it would've been par for the course and I would've known what I was getting into when I decided to the play the game. "No Russian" was such a 180 from the way that missions are in CoD that I was "shocked" in the same way that I would be if a scene in a Disney movie had nudity. Wouldn't you be shocked if a nude scene suddenly appeared in a Disney movie? It wouldn't mean that we haven't seen nudity or worse countless times in other movies, just that we're surprised to see it in this type of movie.

 

[Carolinas Identity*]

Again, I didn't say that it wasn't controversial. I was comparing the degree that it was to another controversy. If you believe that this and "Hot Coffee" both created the same degree of controversy, that's fine and you might even be right, but I'm not sure how you're going to support that without anecdotes of your own.



There's a difference between giving you the option to do bad things to innocents and forcing you to watch and encouraging you to participate in them. The fact that you or I have done disturbing things in games out of choice doesn't mean that everyone should be forced to participate in them as part of the actual mission.

Also, I thought that I clarified, but I was only "shocked" that it came out of nowhere in a game series that's always been about killing enemy combatants. As I said, if it had been a Postal game, such a mission wouldn't have been shocking at all, since it would've been par for the course and I would've known what I was getting into when I decided to the play the game. "No Russian" was such a 180 from the way that missions are in CoD that I was "shocked" in the same way that I would be if a scene in a Disney movie had nudity. Wouldn't you be shocked if a nude scene suddenly appeared in a Disney movie? It wouldn't mean that we haven't seen nudity or worse countless times in other movies, just that we're surprised to see it in this type of movie.

you know you can skip the mission entirely right?

 

[Blainer114*]

I played modern warfare 2 when it first came out and the airplane terminal part I thought was actually pretty cool as it was normal to do that in any of the gta games. I think a year or two ago I was reading an article and the airplane terminal part was part of most controversial gaming moments and I'm like really? It was completely normal to see in a game to me. The world is full of all this pc propoganda now and ppl ***** too much about the stupidest things so I guess I could see why it'd be considered controversial in todays world

 

[tmurfin]

you know you can skip the mission entirely right?

This. You have a choice.

 

[The Nuge]

you know you can skip the mission entirely right?

Or simply walk through without firing a bullet. It's kind of ironic that people would complain about a mission where you kill innocent people when the only reason they killed innocent people was because they consciously chose to shoot innocent people instead of letting them live

 

[Emperoreddy]

I can't tell if Arin is bad at games on purpose or not.

 

[Emperoreddy]

RARE was always an overrated company. Their N64 games are not the pinnacle of 3D platformers like some think.

 

[DonskoiDonscored]

There's a difference between giving you the option to do bad things to innocents and forcing you to watch and encouraging you to participate in them. The fact that you or I have done disturbing things in games out of choice doesn't mean that everyone should be forced to participate in them as part of the actual mission.

There is a whole PSA/trigger warning at the beginning of the game that will let you completely skip the mission (in some countries, the mission was heavily edited or not even included in the game). There are also no achievements to be earned on 'No Russian' for that reason. There is literally no penalty of any sort and the game completely avoids even mentioning the mission in later missions (although MW3 does mention it IIRC).

The developers did not encourage or discourage anyone to play it, they gave everyone the choice and warned them of the potential issues.

MW2 did have a lot of controversy surrounding it even beyond 'No Russian' too. The Favela painting was a huge mistake.

 

[Emperoreddy]

GTA's entire concept is encouraging and forcing players to do bad things. Hell the title of the game is the name of a major felony.

 

[Osprey]

you know you can skip the mission entirely right?

Do you mean the pop-up that occurs when you first start the campaign, asking if you want the option to skip a potentially offensive mission somewhere down the line, without going into any specifics? How many gamers, especially the CoD demographic, choose Yes to that? I think that we all know that that option is there not for the sake of gamers, but for the developer's and publisher's sake, so that they can attempt to protect themselves by arguing "but you can skip the mission entirely." It's a bit of a flimsy and transparent excuse when they make it and, to be honest, I don't see how it gets less so just because gamers make it for them.

I can also skip the slow parts of movies and TV shows. It doesn't mean that they're immune to criticism.

Or simply walk through without firing a bullet. It's kind of ironic that people would complain about a mission where you kill innocent people when the only reason they killed innocent people was because they consciously chose to shoot innocent people instead of letting them live

Are you suggesting that people have no reason to complain if they simply walk through without firing a bullet? Isn't the mission a walking simulator, then, and isn't that a decent criticism to make? If they do open fire because they don't want to just walk behind, doing nothing, does that really strip them of all entitlement to criticize? If the options are "be bored and unchallenged" or "be evil" and you're not thrilled with either, isn't that, alone, enough reason to raise criticism?

Either way, regardless of what you choose, you're still portraying a CIA agent who's following behind a bunch of terrorists on a rampage and doing nothing about it. You don't see any issue with that? At the very least, it breaks the immersion.

It seems to me that you guys believe that you have to be on one extreme or the other, totally defending it or being totally offended by it. I'm not really "offended" by the mission, since I'll gladly kill innocent people in games, and I don't mind civilian slaughters occurring in games, either, but participating in one in which I'm playing an armed good guy and my two options are doing nothing or contributing to the slaughter is just not good mission design, IMO, and the fact that you have a few bad options shouldn't excuse the developers from criticism. I gave an example idea above for a better way to have designed that mission, but I have the suspicion that the developers did it this way on purpose because they suspected that gamers would secretly enjoy participating in an armed massacre like the ones that they see on the news. I think that that's a bit more disturbing than simply allowing players to run over or gun down pedestrians in GTA, for example, and I think that defending that decision by the developers is cutting them too much slack.

 

[Voodoo Child]

- Skyward Sword is the best post-64 Zelda game. Wind Waker is charming and has it's moments but it's too easy, Twilight Princess was ambitious but ultimately drab. For all people hate the motion controls (all I had were sore wrists after Ghirahim battles) and the closed map, it had a great story, nice characters, top music and a slick look.

- The Last of Us is a very good game, but I don't see it on some 'best game of all time!' shortlist.

- You don't like ff7 and OoT, then you just suck.

- ...That said, both ffix and ffx are superior to vii.

- I loved skyrim (about 140 hours), but the bugs...

- Super Mario bros 2 was awesome. I hear the character select screen music in my head still today.

- GTA is one series that needs to definitely re-invent the wheel. Since 3 every game has been the same except nicer graphics and 'oh! I can water the plants now!'

 

[JESSEWENEEDTOCOOK]

RARE was always an overrated company. Their N64 games are not the pinnacle of 3D platformers like some think.

dkc games (mainly 2) are arguably the greatest 2D platformers ever made. And Banjo Kazooie/Tooie are god tier 3D platformers.