Games you hate, yet everyone else cherishes.

[Tai_MT]

I hate you!  I hate the things you like!

 

[awesomerhys]

But, here is the thing, which I tried to make clear in my post - whenever you voice your opinion on the nature of a narrative, which you don't phrase as boiling down to emotional responses, you too are essentially saying that everyone else is wrong.

If you say FFwhatever character is shallow, that is a statement that directly contradicts those who don't consider that to be the case. You might not have leveled that as a response to anyone in particular but that really doesn't matter.

A character can't be both shallow, and not shallow at the same time.

What a character can be though, is likeable and unlikable at the same time, because people have different criteria for what they like in people, and we tend to compare the characters we see to our experiences of human beings.

It's for instance impossible for me to see Barrett as being a "shallow stereotype", because I have several friends who act more or less exactly like Barrett. So, knowing that he resembles actual human beings I know, it would be senseless to write him off as a character.

Shadow from FF6 on the other hand is a problem, because I've never actually seen any human being remotely close to being like Shadow.

I think you're looking too far into this. Not once have I said that other people are wrong for liking a character that I don't. I've said multiple times that I recognise why these games are good and why their stories and characters are so beloved. This was a thread where people were meant to express popular games which they hated, and I only did just that. With that first sentence I've quoted, you're essentially saying "because I think this, it must mean I am right, and everyone is wrong." This completely defeats the object of a debate, don't you think? And it's not what I think at all.

Just to reiterate, the main game of my discussion, FFVII, is a perfectly good game. I know this, the proof is there. It's just that I personally have no love for it. That's pretty much all I wanted to convey. No one is wrong for liking anything, and the fact that I'm expressing that I don't like it doesn't mean I think those who think the opposite are wrong for thinking so.

 

[Tai_MT]

I dunno, I personally think FFVII is a terrible game with a lot of flaws.  But, then again, I also believe a large chunk of the gaming population are blithering idiots.  My belief in that is based upon the fact that CoD does so well despite never really changing and the game turning into a cheat fest less than a year after release because the devs don't care once they've got your money.

But, hey, that's my own belief.

I certainly don't fault anyone for hating the games I enjoy when they present arguments to back up their opinions (as I do).

Because of the nature of the video game industry and fans, it's nearly impossible to get anyone to side with you when you tell them all the flaws in their games.  This is one of the reasons a lot of them resort to arguments like "it's an opinion argument".  If you can back up your "opinion" with lots of examples, you're no longer arguing about opinions.  You're arguing about tangibles that can be right or wrong depending on the evidence provided.  Now, if you can't explain your like or dislike of something, that's an opinion.  Opinions are based purely in the realm of emotional attachment and can't really be explained to others.  EX:  "That woman is so hot!"  "Why?" "I like the way her legs look and how beautiful her face is..."  VS:  "She's got 3% body fat, by societies standards she's almost a supermodel because she fulfills all the criteria of an attractive person".

But, I don't think a lot of people have ever tried to figure out that a lot of people say "That's your opinion" as an effort to simply dismiss the evident faults.  It's an argument tactic that is mostly used as a misdirect or a deflection.

 

[Galenmereth]

I certainly don't fault anyone for hating the games I enjoy when they present arguments to back up their opinions (as I do).

I can't say I agree that you backed up your opinions on Dark Souls very well though. You say "A game in which 90% of its difficulty is derived from really poor controls.", but what do you mean by that specifically?

Also, it's worth noting that Dark Souls on PC is a very bad port, and should not be played with a kb/mouse--there's no denying that. But with a controller, it works as intended. The devs do state on the Steam store page that you really should have a controller to play it. With a controller, it has some of the tightest controls in gaming. That's my opinion backed by my argument that I "got" the controls within ten minutes of playing the game, and from there spent over 100 hours honing my own skills. My deaths were never unfair--except a few times when I got framerate drops due to aforementioned bad porting, but I fixed that with te DSfix patch.

 

[Tai_MT]

I'm playing Dark Souls on the Xbox 360 because they gave it to me for free.  If you want details on the bad controls here they are:

The game tells you that hitting the B Button does a Backstab.  It tells you that holding a direction and hitting B does a dodge roll.  There's an enemy about 20 feet from where the game tells you this.  So, I get behind an enemy, hit the B Button and...  I bunny hop backwards.  What?  I try again, same thing.  I decide to just mash the attack button and to my delight discover that hitting RT or RB behind an enemy does the backstab and not the B Button.  Cool Beans!

A bit later in the game, it tells me "Hit LT to Parry, then RB to Reposte" or whatever it's called.  So, I try this out since the information is in the same room as a decently armed enemy.  I hit LT, nothing happens.  I figure it has to probably do with timing it with the enemy attacks, so I try again...  And again....  And again...  And die without ever getting the timing.  So, I load back up, collect my dropped crap, try it again on the same enemy, still searching for the proper timing.  After my second death, I determine that maybe it has nothing to do with timing and I'm meant to hold the button down.  I hold it down, get gouged in the face in a flurry of hits and die.  My third attempt at it, I decide maybe it has to do with positioning or not using my shield.  I line up my character dead on and try to Parry with my shield out.  I get struck a few times and lose half my health.  So, I two-hand my axe instead and see if that helps any.  Nope, I die again.  So, on my fourth run, I'm absolutely pissed off.  How do I eventually pull off the parry?  Mashing LT as fast as I can over and over again.  I still have no dayum clue how I'm meant to parry without doing that.

So, I get a bit further into the game and a boss monster shows up.  I go, "okay, I can circle strafe this mofo and pound him with my magic spell".  I click the stick down to "lock on" from up on the balcony....  Nothing.  Doesn't lock on.  I go to try to jump down on the guy like the text told me to do and...  I fall down to him and he promptly hits me into the ground and combos me into submission without allowing me to get back up.  Okay, I try again.  Back up on the balcony, I click the stick to lock on as I'd been taught and....  Nothing.  So, I stand up on the balcony trying to get the lock on to work so that I can do the "jump off and hit you with my axe" thing.  The boss gets impatient with me, jumps up, smashes me and the balcony to pieces and I die.  This time, I'm pissed.  I just fall off the balcony and get behind him and start beating on him.  By this point, I'd given up trying to cast my spell as none of the buttons were working to cast it.  I get him down to half health and he just decides to smash the ground around him, then turn around, and infini-combo me to death.

At that point, I gave up playing because of the absolutely atrocious and broken controls which didn't make a lick of sense to begin with.  I was hoping for a genuinely difficult game.  Parts of it actually looked like it was genuinely difficult.  However, all of my difficulty came from the poor controls, poor explanations of controls, and lack of controls ever working.  I died more times to the controls not working than to anything inherently stupid I did.  It's one of those things that makes you wonder if anyone ever playtested who wasn't already intimately familiar with everything in the game.

EDIT:  I mean, I guess if I want a difficult game that controls well I can go back to Super Ghouls and Ghosts or something...

 

[awesomerhys]

@Tai_MT It sounds like you're blaming the "bad" controls on your own personal ineptitude. The game absolutely does not tell you to backstab by hitting the B button. And parrying is not something you can just do, you have to time the swing of your shield with the enemy's attack; you can't just mash LT and hope it will work, there's a method to it.

And the reason you couldn't lock on was because you can't from the balcony. If you drop on his head you deal massive damage, and from the ground, you can lock on to him then.

I've honestly never heard anyone saying the controls are bad. They're fine tuned and incredibly tight. As someone who has beaten Dark Souls 1 & 2 multiple times I can say this from experience.

 

[Tai_MT]

You haven't?  Then you missed my status update on the subject.  Five replies to it of people saying the controls were bad.  One of my friends who had the game long before me...  I brought up the issue of controls for the game and he just said "Yeahhh.....  They're not that tight and very finicky".

Let me just reiterate...  If I've died that many times trying to figure out the controls, the controls are bad.  If I had died that many times because I was doing something stupid (like running straight up to an archer and not blocking their shots), then that's another thing.

Also, the game doesn't tell you that you can't lock on from the balcony (which is a huge dev error, if you're making a tutorial area) or even that your "lock on" has any sort of restrictions on it what-so-ever.

One more thing, saying "I think the controls are fine, I've beaten these games hundreds of times" or what have you simply makes my point.  "Has anyone ever playtested these games that wasn't already intimately familiar with them?".  How about going back to the first time you played these games and trying to remember if you had any issues with the controls or the instructions on the controls.

I've played thousands of games.  I've played so many games that I have never once made a complaint about controls about them.  You're talking to the guy who  played Advent Rising for Xbox and found the controls perfectly logical, smooth, and very easy to use.  Now, here we are at Dark Souls, and seriously...  These are some pretty bad controls.

EDIT:  Or, if they're not bad controls, then you'd have to say that the tutorial at the beginning is the worst to ever exist for making the controls seem hard to use and tricky to execute.  Obviously someone didn't do their job during the game's development.  Blame the Tutorial Guys or blame the Control Guys.  You can pick which one dropped the ball.

Double EDIT:  Fixed the "Advent Rising for Xbox 360" thing.  It was only ever released on the Xbox console and I just reflexively typed Xbox 360.  Error on my part.

 

[Galenmereth]

I just don't know what to say. First time I started up Dark Souls on PC with a 360 controller, the tutorial made perfect sense, and I got combat immediately. Controls are tight. Maybe the 360 versions sucks?

 

[EternalShadow]

Terraria. Minecraft is fine, but I just cannot get into Terraria at all :/

 

[Touchfuzzy]

I dunno, I personally think FFVII is a terrible game with a lot of flaws... 


...Because of the nature of the video game industry and fans, it's nearly impossible to get anyone to side with you when you tell them all the flaws in their games.

When you think the flaw of a game is that the story is incomprehensible, and you've not even played more than a tenth of it, I wouldn't expect anyone to take you seriously enough to argue your points.


The thing is, that you can dislike a game all you want, but to have anything resembling a fully informed opinion on something, you actually have to experience it. Now, do you have to have a fully informed opinion on something to not enjoy it? Nope. But if you are going to try to debate the flaws in something, you have to actually know what you are talking about.


There is a reason critics don't walk out halfway through a film, even if they think it sucks. Their job is to have a fully informed opinion, and to help inform the public of that opinion. Its the nature of the beast.


So no, if someone who has played a game for 4 hours tries to tell someone who has played it several hundred about the flaws of the game, I would be more likely to believe the person who has played something for several hundred knows what he is talking about.


(That being said, I do think that FFVII does have flaws, and I could go into it if people wanted me too, but its none of the complaints that have been mentioned in this thread so far)

 

[Imploded Tomato]

For me, there is only one game that I legitimately hate that everyone else seems to love... And that game, is Madden. Although I don't normally watch football, I'll watch it with my friends from time to time and can enjoy it, but the football game series Madden, and just thinking about all the times people have asked my to play that game with them send chills down my spine. The series is boring and is a waste of time in my opinion.

 

[Tai_MT]

Oh hai, Touchfuzzy.  Cherry Picking my arguments?  Why don't you go reread that post again and realize that the little paragraph in between is meant to separate the two subjects.  I mean, why else make a new paragraph?  Look, I get it, you love Final Fantasy 7.  It's your baby.  You fanboygasm over it all the time.  You dislike anyone hating on it for any reason (whether valid or not).  That's fine, my man.

I mean, if you really want a list of all the problems I have with Final Fantasy 7, I can post them in here again (most of them go beyond the story and are indeed problematic or indications of pure laziness).

My point was...  No matter which game you hate, people on the net who enjoyed it won't side with you and likely won't even admit what you don't like about the game even exists.  If they admit it exists, they will somehow find a way to tell you that it's a "Positive Feature" of the game.  Quick Scoping, for example?  That's the nature of the video game industry and the nature of fans (which is a shortened term of "fanatic", which most fans of anything should look up the meaning of that word before declaring themselves fans of anything again...  It's not really a complimentary thing to be).

If we're going to go by sales, Final Fantasy 7 is a good game.  In fact, depending on how you view the sales, it's a fantastic game.  But, so are games like Call of Duty and Gears of War.  So, take that how you will.

I don't ever go into a game wanting to hate it or dislike it.  I don't even decide to dislike or hate a game based on arbitrary things in it that I enjoy in other games.  I can enjoy a game with a terrible and incomprehensible story if the gameplay is good (I did enjoy the first half of Final Fantasy 13 before the characters started waffling on what to do about their Focus).  My problem with Final Fantasy 7 is a myriad of different issues, the biggest of which was the story.

Also... there are critics who walk out at the halfway point or before of films.  Siskel and Ebert have even done it.  It's usually because the film is so bad that sitting through it is worse than simply walking away.  It is a valid response, and to try to characterize it as anything less is arrogant and condescending.  "Well, I sat through the whole 60 hour affair and enjoyed it!  I know more about it than you do, so my opinion is more valid!".  Well, I couldn't subject myself to the pain and torture and all the flaws I saw in a 3 hour window.  As they say when you read a book "If the first few chapters don't impress you, the rest of the book isn't going to".  How many people ever finished Final Fantasy X-2 before declaring it a terrible game?  How about Final Fantasy 13?  I'll bet that number is awfully low.  Yes, I'm talking about even the professional reviewers.  It's too bad those games are known for being "terrible games" amongst the vast majority of people.  If they had been good games, you'd have told them that their opinions on the games were invalid when compared to someone who had played the entire game.

EDIT:  Let me provide you a good example of what I'm talking about.  If you had to watch a 5 hour real life Snuff Film, would you walk out of it halfway through?  Would you be allowed to have any sort of opinion on said movie or those involved if you hadn't sat through the whole thing?  Would you be allowed to even make a criticism of said movie if you'd left earlier out of disgust?  Granted, Final Fantasy 7 is nowhere near as reprehensible (or even terrible) as a Snuff Film... But this analogy is kind of just here to blow up the whole "Not allowed to talk about something you haven't finished or watched all the way through".  Just trying to make the complex understandable. [Edit End/]

The nature of the video game industry (sales figures determine which games are great) and the nature of fans (it's hard to talk anyone out of their fan status, even when you've got overwhelming proof that what they're a fan of isn't that great).  If you disagree with either of these things, very few are going to side with you.  That's the nature of the gaming world we live in.

But, let me leave you with one fun tidbit:  People have posted in this topic damning games I enjoy.  They've listed off games and franchises that I follow as if I were a fanatic.  Some of them have even listed off reasons for not liking them.  I've either said nothing or have told them that I understood where they were coming from because of the nature of the game and the nature of personal tastes.  Case in point, how many people have posted that they hated Skyrim or Oblivion?  I love the games, but I get what they're talking about and where they're coming from.  Meanwhile, I've mentioned that I hate Final Fantasy and listed all the flaws I've seen within the game...  And I get a hoard of people trying to change my mind or prove me wrong.  People who create and dedicate entire topics to "getting my mind right" on the subject.  Apparently, Final Fantasy 7 is so regarded as "untouchable and unstainable" that anyone who does so, must be made to conform or be castigated into submission with the words of "You can't have an opinion on it, because you didn't play it all the way through".  Yes, the age old argument of "There's no way you could possible know about it, so you aren't allowed to have an opinion of it".  It's the method by which a losing argument tries to censor the winning argument because they don't have anything intellectual to back it up with.

With all that said and an angry retort incoming on it...  Let me reply to Galen.

---

@Galenmereth

It's entirely possible the 360 version sucks.  I've only ever played it on this console, so I don't know for sure.  What I may end up doing later is simply clearing my save file and starting again.  Perhaps run the tutorial a few different times until the controls make more sense.  I think I could enjoy the game if it weren't for the controls giving me such issues.  But, as it stands now...  I'm just so frustrated and angry with the controls and lack of explanations in the tutorial that I hate the game at the moment.  I'll give it another try sometime later.  Right now, I'm tinkering with Dragon Age Origins.  Another game I have a few issues with... but nothing too terribly bad.  Nature of the medium, I guess.  Though, I would like it if my main character actually talked.   Maybe that's fixed in the sequel?

 

[Touchfuzzy]

You seem to be completely missing the point here. There are a million reasons to not iike a game. I'll never begrudge someone not liking a game. Hell, you don't even have to like FFVII, that is totally for you to do.


But your reasoning is silly. The criticism you threw out as your primary one, that the games story doesn't make any sense, is absolutely bizarre when you've played around a tenth of it. For comparison, that would be like watching 10 minutes of a movie before declaring that the story doesn't make sense. There are plenty of reasons I could decide that a movie is terrible in the first 10 minutes, but not understanding the story yet isn't one of them.


For instance, it could have absolutely terrible acting, or the sets could look like they are made of cardboard, or the plot could have shown something I find morally reprehensible in a positive light. These are all things that I could see shutting off a movie or walking out on a movie early on. (Though, I would still probably try to make it more than 10 minutes in.)


Just like in a game, if I find the gameplay terrible, or the graphics are painful to look at (this doesn't have to do with technology level, but just stuff that doesn't work together and just hurts my eyes), or the whole morally reprehensible thing again. All of those are valid complaints that can be judged very early in a game.


How much sense the story makes, can't. You are trying to put together a puzzle with only a tenth of the pieces and guess what the picture is. Sure, in some games you could possibly do this, but FFVII does not have a simple narrative. Even my explanation of it was cut down and I had to decide what parts to explain and what parts to gloss over to try and keep the center of the plot, because there is a lot going on.


Oh, also the line that you keep throwing out that basically equals "The only reason you like it is because you played it when you were too stupid to know any better" is insulting.


And for all those people who played 2 hours of FFX-2 and declared it a bad game: That is their loss, that game is fantastic.

 

[frrrosty]

What a lively thread!

I have a bunch of games in this category, so I'll touch on a few.

FFX -- I hate Tidus, I hate Wakka, I hate Rikku, I hate Yuna.  Blitzball sucks.  Lightning canyon sucks.  Lulu's belt-dress jumps way off the deep end into can't-take-it-seriously territory.  I don't begrudge people liking this game but I can't stand it.

If you're wondering which FF games I did like, my favorites are FF6 and FF12.  I'm really excited for FF18.

Heavy Rain -- every character in this game is a moron.  I can't take it seriously when nobody acts with any semblance of rationality.  I can't get invested in the characters when they are all idiots.  On top of that, the gameplay isn't fun, and most of what you do has no impact on anything.

 

[Ghaleon]

I don't know why this seems so heated and I don't want to read thru 27 pages of stuff I honestly don't really care about to find out. But I suggest you just state what your oddly disliked game is and not really go into detail...unless someone asks you why, and then if you are the one asking why, don't argue what their reasons are, you asked, just deal with it.

Not sure who that applies to, but I can't imagine it doesn't apply to someone amongst the argument here.

 

[Ed19]

I hate FF series... but I love the music (Nobuo Uematsu is genius).

I also hate Ragnarok Online, The game gave me feelings that I will never forgive, because the local community was pretty bad...

too many bots, cheaters, and spammers... Monthly fees were necessary too 

 

[TheTonyOne]

I liked FF7 up until you left Midgar. Then it felt dreary and uninteresting. I also felt Sephiroth was a rather ineffectual villain. Become GOD and nobody bats an eye, kill one flower girl and gamers bawl their eyes out. -Kefkaface-

Also, I don't really care for the God of War series. It's like it's trying to be 40k Grimdark but taking itself far too seriously in the process.

 

[awesomerhys]

@Tai_MT Well, it's quite the opposite, in regards to me playing through the games multiple times. I've played them so much because I never had an issue with the controls in the first place. They take some getting used to, certainly, but that goes for any game with the level of depth Souls has.

I know this might be a cop out response, but I think you should stick with it. It's such an amazing game filled with interesting lore, gorgeous areas and really nice gameplay. And if you were curious, Dark Souls 2 is a tad bit more forgiving in terms of difficulty (though it's much harder to parry in that game).

Oh, and the FFVII thing, I'm in agreement that it's a bad game. It's aged terribly compared to the older titles, the gameplay and animations are very choppy, the characters and pre-rendered backgrounds look awful. All very superficial complaints, admittedly, but so many RPGs have looked and played better since then. And had better stories. Suikoden 2, as one example.

And in response to Touchfuzzy's complaint about only playing a tenth of the game, well, if you're not having a good time with a game a tenth of the way through, it's hard to be on board with the other nine. To quote Yahtzee: "you can put your hand on a hot stove for x amount of time, and you'll stop feeling the pain after a while, but you'd have done considerable damage to yourself."

 

[Touchfuzzy]

And in response to Touchfuzzy's complaint about only playing a tenth of the game, well, if you're not having a good time with a game a tenth of the way through, it's hard to be on board with the other nine. To quote Yahtzee: "you can put your hand on a hot stove for x amount of time, and you'll stop feeling the pain after a while, but you'd have done considerable damage to yourself."

Once again missing the point. There are tons of things you can judge about a game very shortly into it. How much sense the plot makes is not one of them. I stopped playing TWEWY after about 5ish hours maybe. Because I couldn't stand the GAMEPLAY of the game. I have no idea if the plot ever made sense, but I will assume it did. Just because I never saw the parts that put everything in context, doesn't mean it didn't make sense.

 

[cane_danko]

fallout 3(and new vegas), final fantasy 7, chrono trigger, world of warcraft, secret of evermore, kotor, xenogears, elders scrolls, baldur's gate 2.

oh wait... this is suppose to be games we hate????? WTF!!!!!???????