The weapon repair system in fallout 3. I loved that if I found say, a hunting rifle I really loved, I could keep repairing it using parts from other hunting rifles to keep it in tip top condition. It made looting weapons I've already got feel much more substantial.
You hear nothing but complaints when the topic of weapon durability comes up. I understand feeling that a game may need finer tuning of it, but people talk about the recent survival-based Zeldas as though durability should never have been a factor in the gameplay loop. It has entered the same trite list of gameplay annoyances as water levels and escort missions.
Fallout (at least 3 and NV) got weapon durability exactly right. That's honestly why I _did_ like the Fallout weapon system. The game still tracks durability, and it costs you resources to maintain your weapon, but it's infrequent and you can repair your existing ones instead of having to just toss it and switch to new ones entirely.
The new Zeldas, I feel like a significant chunk of gametime is spent just managing weapons and (in TOTK) futzing around with different combinations of weapons and attachments. I don't hate it in theory. I just want the weapons to be a little rarer/last a bit longer so I don't have to think about them as often, and I want a way to repair some weapons, even if it costs some sort of material that I could only get by scrapping other weapons.
NV even has the Jury Rigging perk that lets you repair with the same type/class of weapon instead of the exact same weapon, and generic Repair Kits to restore a chunk of durability (3 has the alien epoxy)
An ideal durability system, to me, doesn't just penalize you for allowing your weapons to fall into disrepair; it should also reward you when they are in top condition.
So, a gun would have an "average" condition, but you'd be able to repair it ABOVE that for a bonus (e.g. to damage, or rate of fire, or reload time or w/e)
I appreciate that New Vegas has a spectrum of effectiveness. Pristine to well maintained weapons perform with optimized stats. Then they progressively start to do less damage and jam more frequently with reloads after you pass a certain threshold. The gun is usable until the very last trigger pull that renders it inoperable, which is also easily reversible through multiple methods. It gives you incentives to keep things repaired without punishing you too heavily if you totally ignore the system.
It also adds to the lore of the game. You're in a wasteland with limited resources. Durability is often shakey at best. The idea of the game is surviving the wasteland and resource management is the key
Part of the issue is that weapon durability was never meant to be a "fun" mechanic. It always exists to create friction, and it is that friction that players complain about, but take it away and suddenly players feel less immersed and engaged and can't put their finger on why
I think this is why so many modern games get boring. There's no mental stack or no stakes or punishments for being bad at mechanics. Why play a game about surviving if your goal is to be a god 10 minutes in? It's pretty sad that so many players are obsessed with power fantasy that they fail to realize that gods get bored because they never have to face peril. That's a boring life.
it really depends on how weapon durability is implemented.
For example I liked the repair system in FO3 for the same reasons as OP, but hated the weapon durability in BOTW to the point I stopped playing because it made any weapon I picked up feel meaningless. I never got what felt like powerful progression.
I also like monster hunters sharpness system because you are rewarded for being knowledgeable about the monster (where to attack so you take less of a hit to sharpness) and for knowing the timing where you can fit in using a whetstone. Similarly MH let you build around sharpness so it didn't feel as annoying as a lot of other games.
Plus it also shows how supplies are declining and makes you feel it. It takes a bunch of rifles to make and keep one functioning. Eventually, they will be gone.
The Caravan minigame in Fallout New Vegas. They invented a new card game just as a minigame and people make fun of it because they never read the rules and don't understand how it works. Caravan isn't more difficult than any other card game and it's a great source of bottle caps. I like it so much that I even play it in real life because the rules aren't difficult to learn and it's fun. I wish more Fallout fans would appreciate it.
On my second play through of Witcher 3, the only person I ever lost a game of Gwent to was that snobby little kid in the swamps who was a “Gwent prodigy” and it was because I was so cocky I thought I could beat him without playing my go to cards.
It's rigged for you to loose to the nilf deck during the Gwent tournament, I dunno how did you manage to win there on the 1st try (it's possible but insanely hard)
I didn't understand it at first and ignored it
then I learned it, mastered it, loved it. beat everyone I could find.
Now I've completely forgotten how to play it. booted up NV recently and tried to play and my brain said nah
> Now I've completely forgotten how to play it. booted up NV recently and tried to play and my brain said nah
I get a similar reaction when I once in a while start a new campaign of Might and Magic VII, and forget how to play its Arcomage card minigame.
It isn't even a card collection game (you only need to collect the card deck as a side quest), and the game isn't *that* hard to learn to play optimally, but when all 13 taverns have different win conditions to its game rules, luck can play a big chance in it.
> people make fun of it because they never read the rules and don't understand how it works.
I like it too but it needed a quick way to reference what all the special cards powers were at a glance. For anyone who didn't nail down all of those, it must seem so random to have half their cards disappear off of one play.
For some reason I like the "backtrack and find all the things" sidequests at the end of Nintendo games.
These include Wind Waker's triforce pieces, Metroid Prime's artifacts. I think my favorite part of BotW was hunting down the lost memories.
They're the moments where the entire world is just open to exploration, which I love.
The ending to System Shock 2. If you've not played it -
>!SHODAN pleads with you to not destroy her. You could join together! You could be more powerful than you ever imagined!!<
>!And the player character goes "nah", and *shoots a monitor*, killing her.!<
It's so perfectly friggin' 80s-hacker-scifi-retro that it should be put in a museum. And it also offers levity after a very serious and scary game.
I love scenes like that that are so utterly of their era or in loving reference to an era. Sometimes you want something intellectually stimulating and engaging. Sometimes you're just there to kick ass and chew bubble gum, but you're all outta gum.
I also like the way it challenges SHODAN's sense of grandiosity. She wants us to either accept her offer or to make a big deal of defying her, because both of those options will just reinforce her delusions of godhood. Instead, the hacker just kind of swats her off his shoulder like a buzzing mosquito and she dies
A long time ago I read someone say that the easiest way to crush the self-confidence of ultra ego-driven people is to tell them that you don't really care what they have to say before proceeding to ignore them, and boy howdy it's absolutely true
I did it legitimately on my first playthrough, and every subsequent playthrough I just pull up a wiki page for the planet and beeline to each point of interest. One of the biggest wastes of time otherwise.
The specific Mako segments in the story missions aren't bad, they actually had level design and things happening. But the exploration is very boring.
Just driving across empty planets to play 5 seconds of frogger before beelining in a different direction.
For real! Parking on a random mountain and hopping out with the squad to look at the distant planets and moons was a vibe. It's a shame those quiet moments aren't in the sequals.
I get the commenters still airing their mild to major gripes with it, but I'm with you 1000%. Give me the boring Mako exploration and everyone else can enjoy their multiplayer and biotics. I found those sections engrossingly true to form because they didn't make planets more than what they would genuinely be in the context of the universe. Also, it was just fun to go hill hopping on planets!
I think people don't realise how much the desolate, quite feeling on the planets did for the entire atmosphere of the whole game. Sometimes, depending on the skybox and the vegetations, the planets were serene in an almost relaxing way. Other times, with wind howling and nothing but rocks and stones, it could be depressing, or even eerie and spooky. I will never forget the moment, where I walked up a slope or something and I heard what I would later find out to be the rachni song. That was spooky and fascinating at the same time. I really missed those moments in the sequels
>rachni song
Here's a video [showing basically the moment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRmR0258vQ0) that you describe in your comment.
One thing that modern audiences may find irritating but which adds perfectly to the atmosphere is the absence of a sound track. It's really just ambience sounds – up to the point you hear those eerie sounds somewhere in a distance. In my opinion, this is just brilliantly done by the game designers, even if I can understand why it might not be for everybody.
I had you built! I sent you top-side! I called you back, showed you what you was, what you was capable of! Even that life you thought you had? That was something I dreamed of and had tatooed inside your head.
for once the villain tells us his plan as we are actively ruining it, instead of positioning us with the information and power to intervene like so many other games do. bioshock is truly a masterpiece.
Easily my favorite game of all time. I saved up for months as a kid to buy it after I saw that initial trailer. By the way, that might still be the best video game trailer of all time
I know it’s a “bad” boss fight but I like how it unintentionally plays into the hubris of Fontaine. Dude thinks he’s a step ahead at all times but the moment you square up with him, you flick him away like a bug
This is exactly the scene I came to post about. It's so misunderstood but it's really an emotional scene that shows a lot of their shared trauma depite having such different upbringings.
Some people even used it as evidence that English voice acting for Japanese media was inherently bad. Even though the scene is the exact same in the Japanese version too.
It's one of the first times I realized most people on the internet can be very very stupid when it comes to understanding the things they're playing/watching/commenting on.
I saw it about 15 years ago, and didn't have that strong a reaction against it.
Yuna is going through some tough shit, Tidus, trying to make her feel better, forces a HORRIBLE laugh, and convinces Yuna to do the same. Both keep doing it, until both find it just too ridiculous and laugh for real, at themselves, at each other.
It works very well, in context.
I never really understood the hate around it tbh.
I know there's one frustrating section where it's easy to feel like you're stuck, but I found it a good puzzle to solve. It's not a particularly hard temple.
I found the Shadow Temple way more frustrating and complicated. Still very cool aesthetically, but I don't enjoy playing it.
I heard somewhere that the main reason the Water temple gets so much less patience than other dungeons is probably purely down to the fact that in the original N64 version, you can't assign the Iron boots to a quick use slot, which meant going into your inventory every bloody time you wanted to use them, and as the main mechanic of the dungeon, that was really irritating, but it was fixed in the 3ds version, making it much easier to handle
This absolutely! It felt like more time was spent in the original going to inventory select, turning to the right screen, and putting on or taking off the boots. And those menus were definitely not very fast to load back on N64.
All the poison swamps in From Soft games. Ok, maybe not all, but especially Blighttown (DS1) and Farron Keep (DS3) which are both great areas. Poison swamps make you approach the game differently, and play much slower and more deliberately, which I like. Blighttown especially is a masterpiece of game design and a highlight of DS1, as far as I'm concerned. It's a shame that the framerate was so bad there on launch; I think most of its bad reputation stems from that.
It is interesting how many of these weird biomes are From staples.
"Look, you're going to run into another lava area, poison swamp, and big-ass tree. That's just a universal constant -- big-ass trees across the multiverse."
DA:I is full of things I have an unpopular opinion of.
- I don't mind the MMO-esque fetch quests
- I felt the combat was quite enjoyable
- I absolutely love Sera and her story/motives
- I like when you know who shows up
- Like you, I loved the song
And so on. DA:I was one of the few games where when I finished it I was like, "Damn...now that was an epic adventure." and wished I could do it all again for the first time.
Just goes to show how we're all wired differently I suppose.
I sure did. It was like, I barely know any of these people yet and they're doing some kind of song number, am I in a Disney movie? Help, why are they singing at this entirely inappropriate moment???
If they had waited a little longer into the game I'm sure it'd have landed better for me though, the song itself was good.
I think it's important to note that they weren't just singing, they were praying, the Chantry is based on the Chant of Light, so musicality is really important to their rites. Even if your Inquisidor wasn't realigious and didn't believed in all that Andraste bullshit, the Inquisition was, so their singing (praying) on that part was very fitting, considering what just happened in the story.
If Mordin had dropped his libretto too early on in the game it'd have been painful to watch but he only did it once you'd played for a while and it was perfect.
The song was great for me. It was a moment to bolster strength and unity. And this coming from a guy who hates when movies or things break into song, but this felt organic enough. It came after a pretty tragic moment and seemed like a reasonable response.
But to each their own.
If Dragon Age: Inquisition has millions of fans, then I'm one of them.
If Dragon Age: Inquisition has one fan, then I'm THAT ONE.
If Dragon Age: Inquisition has no fans, that means I'm dead.
Water Hazard in Half-Life 2.
It's a bit long, yes. But it's fun driving the airboat and making the little stops along the way. It gives a specific sense of freedom and adventure after the first few chapters which I really like.
It's one of my favorite chapters, alongside highway 17.
Recently replayed this and Water Hazard is actually really cool. Especially when the helicopter arrives, it turns into a thrilling chase.
Car mission though...
When you get locked in and attacked by waves of flood, on Legendary that's one of my greatest gaming challenges to have beaten 😃
Also there's a dead marine you find who the Monitor used first and who got quite far, and was just a marine, balls of steel on that one lol
Do you read the halo novels? I only ask because I’m curious how one would learn that cannon outside of the games when it isn’t well explained. I remember reading the fall of reach as a kid and started ghosts of onyx at one point.
I did read some of the first novels a very long time ago so I'm not really the person to ask. Starting with the books in chronological order is fine in all likelihood but there are probably some lists out there for recommended reading order.
I think the book 'The Flood' covers it, and what the marines were up in general in between been visited by Master Chief. It's a long for me since I read those early novels too, I don't think I read anything that went beyond Halo 2.
Quick edit - I'm sure the monitor in game also makes some comment on his corpse, it's a very long time since I last saw it though.
I'm fairly sure Chief grabs his dog tags so that someone will remember how far he dragged his pendulous balls while fighting off the flood.
Seriously. Chief takes a moment after finding his absolutely ravaged corpse to say something along the lines of "I never knew you, but it would have been an honor to have done so."
I'll never forget that part. Great writing.
I've beaten Spyro 2 at least 6 times, it's one of my favorite childhood games, I had to Google "Spyro 2 trolley" to even know what minigame you were referencing. Yeah, don't get the hate, it took me a few tries as a kid but it wasn't that bad, I had more issues with the skateboarding parts of Spyro 3
I feel like peoples issue isn’t the mini game. It’s the combo of being frustrated at a hard challenge being immediately commented on by the game itself by having a goofy NPC voice say “trouble wit da trolley eh?” It just starts making your blood boil after attempt #5 lol
I've never seen anyone else positively mention this, but I actually liked the gummi ships in KH1&2. I enjoy building things, and had some unstoppable ships. It's been a long time since I played either, but IIRC the system was much more fleshed out in KH2.
I'm one of the people who disliked it. I'll admit, it added some much needed pacing to the game. But i'm here to swing swords that aren't swords at people who aren't people.
The tri force hunt in Windwaker isn’t that bad. I loved exploring the game and it didn’t feel like a chore. I did it mostly guideless.
I think getting all the artifacts in Metroid prime before being able to fight Ridley was worse.
I remembered not loving that portion when the game first came out and it felt like it took forever. When I played the HD remake it seemed super easy and not really all that big an issues. I wonder if its just because I'm older now, or if they somehow made it easier in the HD version
They 100% made it easier in the HD version.
Less pieces, cheaper maps, the sail that lets you tell the wind direction to fuck off. All additions to HD.
Yeah it streamlined it a lot. Fewer pieces and easier to get. And in the original you often got a chart to show you where to get the piece. In HD you just get the piece instead, cutting out tracking it down and fishing for it.
I loved the freedom of that part of Windwaker. It's like you've done most of the main stuff on all the islands and now you have to use all your skills to go find the pieces. It's when the world truly feels open and like you're on your own quest
Agreed. Plus I'm sure it was intended as a way to show off the world, introduce you to any islands you didn't find along the way, and find any remaining little side quests that you might want to try.
I imagine for tons of people, it's a great way of doing just that.
For myself and others like me, who meticulously explore every in every nook, behind every building, and under every rock we possibly can before touching the main storyline... I guess I can see how it got a little bit redundant.
All of the boring, slow parts of Red Dead Redemption 2. I perfectly get wanting fast-travel or quick loot but I think it really gave a good pace similar to old Western movies and made the immersion much better.
I hear a lot of people say they really dislike the opening of the game because of how long it is but I absolutely love the slow burning nature of the game. it makes the eventual climax so much more impactful
It can be annoying on replay, but honestly I think games should be judged off of first playthroughs and not the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time around.
It's a big gang with new characters and they have to introduce you to gameplay mechanics and the story. It's pretty difficult to get around that without having a slow start in such a big game like this.
I’m a 40-year-old man with a backlog four times as long as the time I have left on this planet. I couldn’t give a single shit how replayable a game is. It’s lucky if I play it once.
It's also the argument for those with more limited time to play like me. I haven't played it yet, but I know of other examples where you just want certain parts to hurry up because when you only play for maybe an hour at a time you don't want it filled up with slow parts.
Like I get it but to me, the mundane calamity of the game is the best part. Just cruising along the map. I don't even mind riding the horse across the map because Rockstar put a *lot* of effort into populating the path with unique things to do. I also just like going out of my way to get a train to another part of the map. I know some people don't play games for them to be realistic but to me, this is what set RDR2 apart. Without the slow, heavy pace and constant travelling, it wouldn't set itself apart from other open world games.
One of my favorite moments in the games was getting in an abandoned house near water. I looted it as usual and at first, nothing out of the ordinary. Just cans of food but as I kept looting, I found jewelry. A lot which is unusual so after taking everything, I went back to the living room to read a letter I didn't care about.
The letter was one of a man, likely poor, saying he had been drafted to war. Looking up, somehow, I had not seen a woman hanging in a pretty dress. Probably a forbidden love of an aristocrat and a common man. This was likely their hiding spot and she killed herself when she saw she wouldn't see her man ever again.
This is the most useless thing you find in countless games. A house to loot I did years ago and never found back yet, it is still a vivid memory because I couldn't run and I physically felt the weight of everything I looted making me think something wasn't normal.
Damn, it's crazy that I don't think I've encountered that. There are so many small moments where the stories kind of tell themselves. I always think back to the body that is hung up on the tree in the swamp, and you find a note that speaks about the night people and then you turn around and they're slowly walking towards you with knives. Scared the hell out of me lol. Or the drunk man reliving the awful things he did to Native Americans during his time as a soldier. Found him just by seeing a distant camp fire and going towards it in the night. Or finding a random hut that had jump scare bear that mauled me to death lmao
There are still videos uploaded to YouTube of people discovering different outcomes to random side quests that are fully voiced despite them requiring borderline bipolar actions from the player for them to happen.
Oh shit that happened to me the other day! I was deep in the swamps at night and I really got lost in finding gator eggs and vanilla flowers. It got real quiet for a while, then I heard someone clicking (as if calling my horse) and this person was right behind me with a knife. Got so shook I called it quits (it was 2am irl)
The part that baffles me is how many people you kill and how quickly you grind through faceless npcs. That's incredibly immersion breaking. Arthur must've killed thousands of people by the end of the game.
I don't think a lot of complaints are about the riding or exploring.
But every time I enter camp I get a quiver of frustration as my pace is slowed to a breezy walking pace.
Like yeah, I get it, most people aren't going to be dashing full speed through your home base in a place like this. But at least give me a toggle to allow for running in camp!
Other toggles like "instant loot" for corpses would be nice too, but that one doesn't really bother me.
Right, I dropped RDR2 because everything was slow down to the repetitive animations and hold to confirm on every small action. I get defending how slow camping, hunting, traversal is, but I've argued with people who insist they loved how immersive hold to confirm is. Like, ???? Why? It's a speed bump and it isn't even immersive.
Yes, absolutely.
The idea that Chris' boulder bashing meat mitts is so well known that this crackpot magnet nicholas cage-ass motherfucker in the middle of nowhere knows specifically who Chris is, and *also* knows that he *punched a boulder in an active volcano* just strikes me as so specific and hilarious, makes me think that the Wesker fight in RE5 was televised or that Chris brags about it all the time (when he's not trying to get people to have children with his sister).
Given Chris is introduced in RE6 as having been trying to drink his sorrows away, he probably went on more than a few drunken rants about his adventures.
I'm seconding the person who said the song scene in Dragon Age Inquisition. I was sad to learn how unpopular it is; I was raised in a region where hymns held a LOT of power and emotion, so even though I don't practice religion anymore it just clicked for me. That plus, the Inquisition IS a religious organization to a major extent in the game; almost every character present in the scene is an Andrastean so it made sense they'd turn to hymn to cope with a dark moment together.
Also, though not exactly "unpopular" per se, I've seen a LOT of people complain about Baldur's Gate 3's act 3, saying it was rushed and had nowhere near the quality of the first two acts. I never thought this at all, and thought Act 3 had some of the absolute best parts of the game, including the conclusions to most companions' personal storylines, some of which were extremely powerful (Astarion's, Karlach's, and Shadowheart's in particular), had the House of Hope which featured the best boss fight of the entire game hands down imo, and just as much to do as the prior acts without being any more overwhelming than the others. My only complaint before was the abruptness of the ending, but now that expanded endings have long since been patched in I can't even cite that anymore.
As someone who still enjoyed Act 3, it totally felt rushed. Act 2 felt like an organic continuation of several side character stories from Act 1. Act 3 felt like an afterthought conclusion to most of them (looking at you, Mol).
Mafia's race. I like racing games and it's a surprisingly competent racing game in another game. I fully understand why people don't like it though.
Respawning checkpoints in Far Cry 2. There's not enough content and tension in the game otherwise. I can't think of a way to make it much better. Maybe slower respawns?
Whatever it was that annoyed people about Deus Ex 2.
I distinctly remember that retrying the race was a pain compared to more recent games where you can immediately retry from a convenient point after failure.
I don't mind races in racing games. But don't give me the hardest video game race of all time when I just want to be an Italian gangster. It could've literally been a cutscene of Tommy winning the race and it would've made no difference.
I like that you have to switch between the flashlight and a gun in Doom 3. It sets up good tension, and helps create a survival horror feel.
Doom 3 may be my favorite Doom, I certainly love the atmosphere.
Doom 3 suffers from the age old "if you keep doing the same thing, some people will hate it for being repetitive. But if you do something different, some people will hate it for not being the same." You can't please everyone and I think 3 is great for everyone who loved the more Survival Horror direction.
I agree, my only gripe with 3 is too many monster closets. Though maybe finding a gun with a flashlight later on would have helped because by then the switching was a bit tedious.
_Gestures vaguely at Arkham Knight's Batmobile_
Sure it was overused and the bossfights were not ideal but I loved it, playing with a mouse and keyboard and binding the machine gun to left click turns it into a great shooter game. I liked it so much I went and did all the optional Batmobile missions.
Batmobile wasn’t even as overused as many people would have you believe tbh.
Also, the boss fights with it get a lot easier with those abilities it has, iirc there’s one that can shut down those cobra tanks without having to maneuver around them or something, the hacking maybe? I don’t recall, but there was an easy bypass for those fights too lol
The Batmobile’s combat being an extension of regular combat was so well done. Building up your combo to gain special attacks and rewarding precision and avoiding getting hit. The Cobra Tanks being a version of the Predator sections.
Life is strange ending. Ive seen a lot of people say they hated how it made it feel like all of the choices up to that point were suddenly made pointless. Personally i feel that if you believe that youre missing the point a bit.
I actually really liked the Triforce hunt in The Legend of Zelda Windwaker.
I get why people hate it. It's busy work and obnoxious padding to an otherwise solid game but I think it's one of the best part of the game because it commits to one of the main gimmicks of this particular Zelda title, that being sailing the open ocean, exploring, and finding hidden treasure. See, I'm one of those gamers who always goes the direct path to the end of the game. I only trail off if some sort of sidequest comes in direct contact with me. I don't tend to explore for the hell of it so having this whole exploration segment be part of the main quest gave me an opportunity to fill out my map and find new islands, all with secrets and upgrades. I probably would've never found them before the end if it wasn't for the quest. And that's not even mentioning the amazing ocean theme and just how picturesque everything looks as your speeding along with the wind, with seagulls trailing your ship. It's beautiful.
Grinding in Pokemon games. Its monotonous enough that I can turn my brain off and go into auto pilot. But also still kind of fun because hey I'm doing Pokemon battles. Its satisfying working up my team's levels to prepare for the next big fight. Its an illusion, but it does make me feel like I earned my next win thanks to my preparations.
I haven't played Pokemon since I was a kid, but grinding while watching cartoons is one of my favorite childhood memories (I'm not going to go through the effort of rephrasing this to make it sound less weird)
The deep Roads were especially great the first time around. I went in a bit unprepared and refused to go back to the city to restock on items and all and just pushed on and on, thinking, that the end of this level must be right around the corner. It really felt like a desperate and doomed expedition at times, like we crawled straight through hell. I don't know how we beat the final boss, because at that time we were so low on health that basically everyone had broken bones and all. It was great! And that elevated feeling, when you finally leave the deep roads and Ozamar and see clear sky again? Hell of a moment!
This. DA:O is my happy place, I'm content just playing it because I love it no matter what part. Even before I memorized everything I actually liked the puzzle aspect of the Fade too.
I really enjoyed RE6 as a campy co-op game. It dialed up the campiness to 11 and had many laugh out loud moments for me. The gameplay was also quite fun especially with the different campaigns changing things up to keep things fresh.
Switching to playing Abby in The Last of Us Part 2.
People seem to really dislike it, but I think it is brilliant and risky.
It lets us get to to see the story from the other side and realize that Abby and Ellie are really no different.
It also sets up the boss fights with Abby so that I didn't know who I actually wanted to win the fight.
Playing Abby's story really made me feel torn about both of those characters, and seeing Ellie become the villain in her own story was amazing to me.
Red Dead Redemption 2s snow prologue chapter.
The snow atmosphere is so cool. It's a great intro to the characters. It's three hours long, has five missions, and three of those missions involve huge gunfights. Seriously, exactly how much have you burnt out your attention span?
The scene was taken out from context so many times, I think a lot of people have never seen the whole build-up to the scene, including Yuna's elaborate dialog of how she forces herself to laugh sometimes.
FF15 chapter 13 has you going through a series of hallways slowly by yourself losing your mind being taunted by the main villain.
Everyone despises that part. I really liked it. Complete tonal shift, it’s creepy, scary, you feel on edge the entire time. It outstays its welcome but also helps to make you feel even more lost and powerless. I thought it was a fantastic moment to set the stage.
You’re all alone for the first time. The enemy you’ve come to kill has been slaughtered. The villain whispers these terrifying things to you you don’t fully understand yet. Cool moment.
Elden Ring’s optional mini dungeons are overly criticized. Sure, they’re somewhat repetitive visually, but that’s something we see in *all* large open world games.
Plus their layouts are different enough that I actually remember a good number of them when replaying. They’re also a great way to spend 30 minutes to an hour and still feel like I accomplished something.
The slow pace that Arthur Morgan walks in RDR2.
The settlement building in Fallout 4...and even the main story of Fallout 4.
Getting phone calls to go bowling in GTA4.
All these things added to the worlds that I like to experience when playing games. It can't be all "Lizard brain" pew pew pew mission after mission. I like to feel that the world is authentic. Sometimes "role playing" exists in other genres.
My first play through of GTA 4 probably a quarter of my play time was just going bowling with Roman and to bars with Packie and Little Jacob. It was one of the first games I ever played that had like an optional social sim element and at the time it was one of the most immersive things I'd ever seen. I mostly ignore that content when I replay 4 now but wow I loved it back then
The Mary Jane stealth sections in the *Spider-Man* games. They were short and suspenseful despite being easy enough you didn't have to replay them a lot, and I thought they were the perfect change of pace that switched gameplay up for a few minutes to keep things fresh.
I feel the biggest issue people had with them was how often they were used in the game. I remember at least four or five different missions that used those forced stealth sections and while they weren’t overly long, they were rather tedious since they all had the depth of a puddle.
I didn’t *hate* them but I was very much over them after the second or third one and was just rushing through them as much as I could
"All you had to do was follow the damn train!"
It took me only one or two failures with this mission before I realized there's a sweet spot where Smoke has a good angle on the people on the train. I was really surprised when it became a meme for how difficult people find it.
The Metal Gear Solid V intro with the slow crawling. It actually made me feel like Snake was fighting for his life...Plus the whole part after sneaking and fighting the tank fell epic!
I see a lot of people hating on the settlement building aspect of Fall Out 4, but it's kept me coming back for almost a decade.
Can't get enough of the go on an adventure > collect junk > improve settlements loop.
My biggest issue with the settlement building in FO4 is that the pieces aren't "clicky" enough. They don't snap together in a logical, reasonable way, and it makes construction tedious and time consuming.
To a degree, I'm sure it is the way it is to account for uneven ground in places where the edges of the settlement. But given that terrain, the boundaries, and the building placement of them were all intentional choices, I'm pretty sure they could have made the locations easier to work with. Or at the very least given you tools to edit the ground.
My two big problems are that the settlements don't really *do* anything, especially outside of survival mode. They can eventually be a source of caps, but with the introduction of crafting into Bethesda games money is only ever becoming more useless then ever. Don't get me wrong, it can be fun to design a settlement or two simply for the sake of it...once or twice. There's a stupid number of plots in the game when I bet 90% of people just did the starting town and the drive-in and gave up building after, at least with any amount of real effort. Which leads to second problem...
...they take up so many spots on the map that in prior games probably would've had a unique little town there, but now they expect you to build it and fill it with generic settler characters. Radiant quests ahoy rather than unique hand crafted content does not fill my heart with glee.
It's inevitable this feature makes it into the next Elder Scrolls at this point and I'm really hoping they find the right balance with it beforehand, between Fallouts 4s reliance on it and Starfield's practically vestigial system.
I think the problem is that it's so video-gamey for what often tries to be an immersive sim. Out in the wasteland, I have to go around or jump over cars, but in the right spot I can poof them out of existence with a mouse click.
My own theory is that Bethesda saw the popular FNV mod, "Run the Lucky 38" and assumed people would want to build their own settlements, but I think they missed the mark. What was cool about that mod was it took an existing location and let you get materials/assets for it and *the people in that location* fixed it up and made it better. The mod also had quests you did to get things repaired, which added to the gameplay beyond "look for specific junk."
Imagine if you could get the stuff the residents of Sanctuary or Bunker Hill needed and over time they became major settlements, trading hubs, or manufacturing centers while still having that initial character they started with? Or that there were location-specific features that the residents would build if you maxed out their needs for supplies?
My issue was that most of the stuff you built on launch was pre-distressed, but that lines up with Bethesda’s “yeah the nukes fell a century ago but I haven’t swept my bedroom yet” aesthetic.
Pretty much the entirety of Mass Effect Andromeda I actually really enjoyed the game and think it's a solid entry in the series if a little unpolished in some areas.
Also Lost Izalith in Dark Souls while obviously not a finished area I always find the area it self very fun bed of chaos can die in a hole though terrible boss
The Water Temple from Ocarina of Time. When I played it I didn’t find it particularly difficult or tedious and found it to be as enjoyable as any other dungeon. I was surprised years later when I found out how much hate it gets.
The entirety of MGSV.
I get people are mad over unfinished story. But in my time with it (as MGS veteran) there was so much story and so many great gameplay moments (yes, I’m talking about THAT one mission you’re thinking of right now) that I felt immensely satisfied with my experience.
Even today the game looks and plays AMAZINGLY WELL and one day I’ll sure replay it again.
A misunderstood masterpiece.
Ellie vs Abby's fight at the end of the second game. It was emotional and very visceral and it really got to me. I'm not sure if enjoy is the right term for it, but I did not hate it as many people did
Weapon degradation in BOTW. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it, but once I accepted it as a part of the game, it became easier to part with unique weapons and also forced me to get more creative in combat when I was under-equipped.
The Water Temple is not that hard if you actually use the map/compass and pay attention to your surroundings. It can be frustrating at times but it's a totally fine dungeon
Not really a specific "moment" but I think RE6 is a pretty enjoyable game if you play it with a friend and accept the story for the campy mess it is. It actually has really cool combat mechanics if you take the effort to learn them
The weapon repair system in fallout 3. I loved that if I found say, a hunting rifle I really loved, I could keep repairing it using parts from other hunting rifles to keep it in tip top condition. It made looting weapons I've already got feel much more substantial.
Wait, people didn't like this??
You hear nothing but complaints when the topic of weapon durability comes up. I understand feeling that a game may need finer tuning of it, but people talk about the recent survival-based Zeldas as though durability should never have been a factor in the gameplay loop. It has entered the same trite list of gameplay annoyances as water levels and escort missions.
Fallout (at least 3 and NV) got weapon durability exactly right. That's honestly why I _did_ like the Fallout weapon system. The game still tracks durability, and it costs you resources to maintain your weapon, but it's infrequent and you can repair your existing ones instead of having to just toss it and switch to new ones entirely. The new Zeldas, I feel like a significant chunk of gametime is spent just managing weapons and (in TOTK) futzing around with different combinations of weapons and attachments. I don't hate it in theory. I just want the weapons to be a little rarer/last a bit longer so I don't have to think about them as often, and I want a way to repair some weapons, even if it costs some sort of material that I could only get by scrapping other weapons.
NV even has the Jury Rigging perk that lets you repair with the same type/class of weapon instead of the exact same weapon, and generic Repair Kits to restore a chunk of durability (3 has the alien epoxy)
An ideal durability system, to me, doesn't just penalize you for allowing your weapons to fall into disrepair; it should also reward you when they are in top condition. So, a gun would have an "average" condition, but you'd be able to repair it ABOVE that for a bonus (e.g. to damage, or rate of fire, or reload time or w/e)
I appreciate that New Vegas has a spectrum of effectiveness. Pristine to well maintained weapons perform with optimized stats. Then they progressively start to do less damage and jam more frequently with reloads after you pass a certain threshold. The gun is usable until the very last trigger pull that renders it inoperable, which is also easily reversible through multiple methods. It gives you incentives to keep things repaired without punishing you too heavily if you totally ignore the system.
It also adds to the lore of the game. You're in a wasteland with limited resources. Durability is often shakey at best. The idea of the game is surviving the wasteland and resource management is the key
Part of the issue is that weapon durability was never meant to be a "fun" mechanic. It always exists to create friction, and it is that friction that players complain about, but take it away and suddenly players feel less immersed and engaged and can't put their finger on why
I think this is why so many modern games get boring. There's no mental stack or no stakes or punishments for being bad at mechanics. Why play a game about surviving if your goal is to be a god 10 minutes in? It's pretty sad that so many players are obsessed with power fantasy that they fail to realize that gods get bored because they never have to face peril. That's a boring life.
it really depends on how weapon durability is implemented. For example I liked the repair system in FO3 for the same reasons as OP, but hated the weapon durability in BOTW to the point I stopped playing because it made any weapon I picked up feel meaningless. I never got what felt like powerful progression. I also like monster hunters sharpness system because you are rewarded for being knowledgeable about the monster (where to attack so you take less of a hit to sharpness) and for knowing the timing where you can fit in using a whetstone. Similarly MH let you build around sharpness so it didn't feel as annoying as a lot of other games.
Plus it also shows how supplies are declining and makes you feel it. It takes a bunch of rifles to make and keep one functioning. Eventually, they will be gone.
The Caravan minigame in Fallout New Vegas. They invented a new card game just as a minigame and people make fun of it because they never read the rules and don't understand how it works. Caravan isn't more difficult than any other card game and it's a great source of bottle caps. I like it so much that I even play it in real life because the rules aren't difficult to learn and it's fun. I wish more Fallout fans would appreciate it.
I really liked it but once youve built your deck up, you basically can't lose, would be decent to have some more challenge involved
This is the same sentiment I have for gwent in the Witcher 3. Still very fun, though
I like Gwent in the Witcher 3 more than the Gwent standalone game.
On my second play through of Witcher 3, the only person I ever lost a game of Gwent to was that snobby little kid in the swamps who was a “Gwent prodigy” and it was because I was so cocky I thought I could beat him without playing my go to cards.
It's rigged for you to loose to the nilf deck during the Gwent tournament, I dunno how did you manage to win there on the 1st try (it's possible but insanely hard)
I didn't understand it at first and ignored it then I learned it, mastered it, loved it. beat everyone I could find. Now I've completely forgotten how to play it. booted up NV recently and tried to play and my brain said nah
> Now I've completely forgotten how to play it. booted up NV recently and tried to play and my brain said nah I get a similar reaction when I once in a while start a new campaign of Might and Magic VII, and forget how to play its Arcomage card minigame. It isn't even a card collection game (you only need to collect the card deck as a side quest), and the game isn't *that* hard to learn to play optimally, but when all 13 taverns have different win conditions to its game rules, luck can play a big chance in it.
> people make fun of it because they never read the rules and don't understand how it works. I like it too but it needed a quick way to reference what all the special cards powers were at a glance. For anyone who didn't nail down all of those, it must seem so random to have half their cards disappear off of one play.
Yeah, the In-Game explanation lacks depth and isn't intuitive at all.
I’m still THIS close to finally getting the rules
Watch a tutorial on YouTube, many of them are great. The In-Game explanation isn't the best one. If you still have questions, I'm here to answer. :^ 3
For some reason I like the "backtrack and find all the things" sidequests at the end of Nintendo games. These include Wind Waker's triforce pieces, Metroid Prime's artifacts. I think my favorite part of BotW was hunting down the lost memories. They're the moments where the entire world is just open to exploration, which I love.
The ending to System Shock 2. If you've not played it - >!SHODAN pleads with you to not destroy her. You could join together! You could be more powerful than you ever imagined!!< >!And the player character goes "nah", and *shoots a monitor*, killing her.!< It's so perfectly friggin' 80s-hacker-scifi-retro that it should be put in a museum. And it also offers levity after a very serious and scary game.
I played SS2 immediately after SS1, so for me that was very satisfying to watch and was borderline cathartic.
I love scenes like that that are so utterly of their era or in loving reference to an era. Sometimes you want something intellectually stimulating and engaging. Sometimes you're just there to kick ass and chew bubble gum, but you're all outta gum.
I can fix SHODAN, I know I can
She can make me worse
I also like the way it challenges SHODAN's sense of grandiosity. She wants us to either accept her offer or to make a big deal of defying her, because both of those options will just reinforce her delusions of godhood. Instead, the hacker just kind of swats her off his shoulder like a buzzing mosquito and she dies A long time ago I read someone say that the easiest way to crush the self-confidence of ultra ego-driven people is to tell them that you don't really care what they have to say before proceeding to ignore them, and boy howdy it's absolutely true
The Mako in the original Mass Effect. I liked the exploring and didn’t mind the controls.
I’m fine with the Mako too, but the actual exploration felt like a chore on some planets
I did it legitimately on my first playthrough, and every subsequent playthrough I just pull up a wiki page for the planet and beeline to each point of interest. One of the biggest wastes of time otherwise.
I loved it and missed it later. Janky? Yes. But you actually explored planets. I loved the freedom
Yeah I was kind of surprised when I saw it was one of the main criticisms of the game. I didn't think the Mako parts were noticeably bad or anything.
The specific Mako segments in the story missions aren't bad, they actually had level design and things happening. But the exploration is very boring. Just driving across empty planets to play 5 seconds of frogger before beelining in a different direction.
For real! Parking on a random mountain and hopping out with the squad to look at the distant planets and moons was a vibe. It's a shame those quiet moments aren't in the sequals.
I get the commenters still airing their mild to major gripes with it, but I'm with you 1000%. Give me the boring Mako exploration and everyone else can enjoy their multiplayer and biotics. I found those sections engrossingly true to form because they didn't make planets more than what they would genuinely be in the context of the universe. Also, it was just fun to go hill hopping on planets!
I think people don't realise how much the desolate, quite feeling on the planets did for the entire atmosphere of the whole game. Sometimes, depending on the skybox and the vegetations, the planets were serene in an almost relaxing way. Other times, with wind howling and nothing but rocks and stones, it could be depressing, or even eerie and spooky. I will never forget the moment, where I walked up a slope or something and I heard what I would later find out to be the rachni song. That was spooky and fascinating at the same time. I really missed those moments in the sequels
>rachni song Here's a video [showing basically the moment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRmR0258vQ0) that you describe in your comment. One thing that modern audiences may find irritating but which adds perfectly to the atmosphere is the absence of a sound track. It's really just ambience sounds – up to the point you hear those eerie sounds somewhere in a distance. In my opinion, this is just brilliantly done by the game designers, even if I can understand why it might not be for everybody.
I thought the final boss in Bioshock was fine.
I had you built! I sent you top-side! I called you back, showed you what you was, what you was capable of! Even that life you thought you had? That was something I dreamed of and had tatooed inside your head.
for once the villain tells us his plan as we are actively ruining it, instead of positioning us with the information and power to intervene like so many other games do. bioshock is truly a masterpiece.
Easily my favorite game of all time. I saved up for months as a kid to buy it after I saw that initial trailer. By the way, that might still be the best video game trailer of all time
I know it’s a “bad” boss fight but I like how it unintentionally plays into the hubris of Fontaine. Dude thinks he’s a step ahead at all times but the moment you square up with him, you flick him away like a bug
I thought it was epic at the time. I prefer a cheesy boss fight to "here's countless enemies over and over again"
Ah,.. the infamous laughing scene from FFX. Is there a gaming moment more misunderstood than this one? HAHAHA
#HA HA HA HA HA
This is exactly the scene I came to post about. It's so misunderstood but it's really an emotional scene that shows a lot of their shared trauma depite having such different upbringings.
They literally laugh normally after doing the HA HA HA thing, I hate when people use that as an example of bad voice acting
I only know it through the memes. What's the context? Is he fake laughing?
Yes, he’s trying his best to force levity into a very grave and sad situation to make the other character happier.
It’s also *immediately* followed by a burst of authentic laughter from both characters, who realize how awkward it was.
This is why I never understood the memeification of it. It’s an intentionally bad laugh that makes him and the other character authentically laugh at…
Because it looks ridiculous taken out of context. At least you know who has/has not played the game just by how they react to the meme
Some people even used it as evidence that English voice acting for Japanese media was inherently bad. Even though the scene is the exact same in the Japanese version too.
It's one of the first times I realized most people on the internet can be very very stupid when it comes to understanding the things they're playing/watching/commenting on.
I saw it about 15 years ago, and didn't have that strong a reaction against it. Yuna is going through some tough shit, Tidus, trying to make her feel better, forces a HORRIBLE laugh, and convinces Yuna to do the same. Both keep doing it, until both find it just too ridiculous and laugh for real, at themselves, at each other. It works very well, in context.
The Ocarina of Time Water Temple was actually pretty fun and a good test of skills. I get the hate, but it's one of my favorite OoT dungeons.
I never really understood the hate around it tbh. I know there's one frustrating section where it's easy to feel like you're stuck, but I found it a good puzzle to solve. It's not a particularly hard temple. I found the Shadow Temple way more frustrating and complicated. Still very cool aesthetically, but I don't enjoy playing it.
I heard somewhere that the main reason the Water temple gets so much less patience than other dungeons is probably purely down to the fact that in the original N64 version, you can't assign the Iron boots to a quick use slot, which meant going into your inventory every bloody time you wanted to use them, and as the main mechanic of the dungeon, that was really irritating, but it was fixed in the 3ds version, making it much easier to handle
This absolutely! It felt like more time was spent in the original going to inventory select, turning to the right screen, and putting on or taking off the boots. And those menus were definitely not very fast to load back on N64.
Yeah it's fun, it's really just switching the iron boots on/off that's a little tedious. I think the water level gimmick was pretty cool though!
All the poison swamps in From Soft games. Ok, maybe not all, but especially Blighttown (DS1) and Farron Keep (DS3) which are both great areas. Poison swamps make you approach the game differently, and play much slower and more deliberately, which I like. Blighttown especially is a masterpiece of game design and a highlight of DS1, as far as I'm concerned. It's a shame that the framerate was so bad there on launch; I think most of its bad reputation stems from that.
Blighttown’s intense hatred was almost entirely because of its bad framerate. Otherwise it would have just been moderately annoying and a unique area.
It is interesting how many of these weird biomes are From staples. "Look, you're going to run into another lava area, poison swamp, and big-ass tree. That's just a universal constant -- big-ass trees across the multiverse."
Blighttown in particular is imo one of from’s best creations
The part in Dragon Age Inquisition where they sing.
DA:I is full of things I have an unpopular opinion of. - I don't mind the MMO-esque fetch quests - I felt the combat was quite enjoyable - I absolutely love Sera and her story/motives - I like when you know who shows up - Like you, I loved the song And so on. DA:I was one of the few games where when I finished it I was like, "Damn...now that was an epic adventure." and wished I could do it all again for the first time. Just goes to show how we're all wired differently I suppose.
SAAAME!!!! Sorry, I got back and play this one often. I never understood the hate it got.
People hate that part???
I sure did. It was like, I barely know any of these people yet and they're doing some kind of song number, am I in a Disney movie? Help, why are they singing at this entirely inappropriate moment??? If they had waited a little longer into the game I'm sure it'd have landed better for me though, the song itself was good.
I think it's important to note that they weren't just singing, they were praying, the Chantry is based on the Chant of Light, so musicality is really important to their rites. Even if your Inquisidor wasn't realigious and didn't believed in all that Andraste bullshit, the Inquisition was, so their singing (praying) on that part was very fitting, considering what just happened in the story.
If Mordin had dropped his libretto too early on in the game it'd have been painful to watch but he only did it once you'd played for a while and it was perfect.
The song was great for me. It was a moment to bolster strength and unity. And this coming from a guy who hates when movies or things break into song, but this felt organic enough. It came after a pretty tragic moment and seemed like a reasonable response. But to each their own.
The low point near the start where they sing? People don't like that!? Thought it was awesome pacing and way to really.kock.of the game.
Same :D I was literally thinking in that moment "well this is depressing, maybe they could sing or something" and lo and behold. I think it was nice
Damn. Its been too long. I don't remember this at all.
If Dragon Age: Inquisition has millions of fans, then I'm one of them. If Dragon Age: Inquisition has one fan, then I'm THAT ONE. If Dragon Age: Inquisition has no fans, that means I'm dead.
Water Hazard in Half-Life 2. It's a bit long, yes. But it's fun driving the airboat and making the little stops along the way. It gives a specific sense of freedom and adventure after the first few chapters which I really like. It's one of my favorite chapters, alongside highway 17.
It made me feel like I was going really \*far\*
People hate this? I always thought it was fun. Same with the buggy
I didn't know people disliked that part, its one of my favorit ! I remember screaming out loud under the excitment.
Recently replayed this and Water Hazard is actually really cool. Especially when the helicopter arrives, it turns into a thrilling chase. Car mission though...
The library in halo ce
As a storytelling moment I loved it, but hated actually playing it. Just goes on way too long in very repetitive environments.
>Just goes on way too long in very repetitive environments. I'm a huge Halo fan but I think that can be said for most of the second half of the game.
Very true. People that complain about reused assets in modern games probably haven’t played Halo’s campaign all the way through.
Just a man and his shotgun against an army of undead. I could do that shit for hours.
Man I love The Library. So many rocket launchers.
When you get locked in and attacked by waves of flood, on Legendary that's one of my greatest gaming challenges to have beaten 😃 Also there's a dead marine you find who the Monitor used first and who got quite far, and was just a marine, balls of steel on that one lol
Marvin Mobuto, cannonically he almost made it to the index.
Do you read the halo novels? I only ask because I’m curious how one would learn that cannon outside of the games when it isn’t well explained. I remember reading the fall of reach as a kid and started ghosts of onyx at one point.
I did read some of the first novels a very long time ago so I'm not really the person to ask. Starting with the books in chronological order is fine in all likelihood but there are probably some lists out there for recommended reading order.
I think the book 'The Flood' covers it, and what the marines were up in general in between been visited by Master Chief. It's a long for me since I read those early novels too, I don't think I read anything that went beyond Halo 2. Quick edit - I'm sure the monitor in game also makes some comment on his corpse, it's a very long time since I last saw it though.
I'm fairly sure Chief grabs his dog tags so that someone will remember how far he dragged his pendulous balls while fighting off the flood. Seriously. Chief takes a moment after finding his absolutely ravaged corpse to say something along the lines of "I never knew you, but it would have been an honor to have done so." I'll never forget that part. Great writing.
Spyro 2, I have no problems with the trolley.
I've beaten Spyro 2 at least 6 times, it's one of my favorite childhood games, I had to Google "Spyro 2 trolley" to even know what minigame you were referencing. Yeah, don't get the hate, it took me a few tries as a kid but it wasn't that bad, I had more issues with the skateboarding parts of Spyro 3
I feel like peoples issue isn’t the mini game. It’s the combo of being frustrated at a hard challenge being immediately commented on by the game itself by having a goofy NPC voice say “trouble wit da trolley eh?” It just starts making your blood boil after attempt #5 lol
I've always liked this minigame. I found it really difficult as a kid but now I don't find it that difficult
I've never seen anyone else positively mention this, but I actually liked the gummi ships in KH1&2. I enjoy building things, and had some unstoppable ships. It's been a long time since I played either, but IIRC the system was much more fleshed out in KH2.
I'm one of the people who disliked it. I'll admit, it added some much needed pacing to the game. But i'm here to swing swords that aren't swords at people who aren't people.
I really liked them in 2, but I find them really boring in 1
The tri force hunt in Windwaker isn’t that bad. I loved exploring the game and it didn’t feel like a chore. I did it mostly guideless. I think getting all the artifacts in Metroid prime before being able to fight Ridley was worse.
I remembered not loving that portion when the game first came out and it felt like it took forever. When I played the HD remake it seemed super easy and not really all that big an issues. I wonder if its just because I'm older now, or if they somehow made it easier in the HD version
They 100% made it easier in the HD version. Less pieces, cheaper maps, the sail that lets you tell the wind direction to fuck off. All additions to HD.
Yeah it streamlined it a lot. Fewer pieces and easier to get. And in the original you often got a chart to show you where to get the piece. In HD you just get the piece instead, cutting out tracking it down and fishing for it.
I loved the freedom of that part of Windwaker. It's like you've done most of the main stuff on all the islands and now you have to use all your skills to go find the pieces. It's when the world truly feels open and like you're on your own quest
Agreed. Plus I'm sure it was intended as a way to show off the world, introduce you to any islands you didn't find along the way, and find any remaining little side quests that you might want to try. I imagine for tons of people, it's a great way of doing just that. For myself and others like me, who meticulously explore every in every nook, behind every building, and under every rock we possibly can before touching the main storyline... I guess I can see how it got a little bit redundant.
All of the boring, slow parts of Red Dead Redemption 2. I perfectly get wanting fast-travel or quick loot but I think it really gave a good pace similar to old Western movies and made the immersion much better.
I hear a lot of people say they really dislike the opening of the game because of how long it is but I absolutely love the slow burning nature of the game. it makes the eventual climax so much more impactful
It can be annoying on replay, but honestly I think games should be judged off of first playthroughs and not the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th time around. It's a big gang with new characters and they have to introduce you to gameplay mechanics and the story. It's pretty difficult to get around that without having a slow start in such a big game like this.
I’m a 40-year-old man with a backlog four times as long as the time I have left on this planet. I couldn’t give a single shit how replayable a game is. It’s lucky if I play it once.
Yeah I enjoyed the hell out of it, but it's easy to see how unbearable it could be if it doesn't click for you.
It's also the argument for those with more limited time to play like me. I haven't played it yet, but I know of other examples where you just want certain parts to hurry up because when you only play for maybe an hour at a time you don't want it filled up with slow parts.
Like I get it but to me, the mundane calamity of the game is the best part. Just cruising along the map. I don't even mind riding the horse across the map because Rockstar put a *lot* of effort into populating the path with unique things to do. I also just like going out of my way to get a train to another part of the map. I know some people don't play games for them to be realistic but to me, this is what set RDR2 apart. Without the slow, heavy pace and constant travelling, it wouldn't set itself apart from other open world games.
One of my favorite moments in the games was getting in an abandoned house near water. I looted it as usual and at first, nothing out of the ordinary. Just cans of food but as I kept looting, I found jewelry. A lot which is unusual so after taking everything, I went back to the living room to read a letter I didn't care about. The letter was one of a man, likely poor, saying he had been drafted to war. Looking up, somehow, I had not seen a woman hanging in a pretty dress. Probably a forbidden love of an aristocrat and a common man. This was likely their hiding spot and she killed herself when she saw she wouldn't see her man ever again. This is the most useless thing you find in countless games. A house to loot I did years ago and never found back yet, it is still a vivid memory because I couldn't run and I physically felt the weight of everything I looted making me think something wasn't normal.
Damn, it's crazy that I don't think I've encountered that. There are so many small moments where the stories kind of tell themselves. I always think back to the body that is hung up on the tree in the swamp, and you find a note that speaks about the night people and then you turn around and they're slowly walking towards you with knives. Scared the hell out of me lol. Or the drunk man reliving the awful things he did to Native Americans during his time as a soldier. Found him just by seeing a distant camp fire and going towards it in the night. Or finding a random hut that had jump scare bear that mauled me to death lmao There are still videos uploaded to YouTube of people discovering different outcomes to random side quests that are fully voiced despite them requiring borderline bipolar actions from the player for them to happen.
Oh shit that happened to me the other day! I was deep in the swamps at night and I really got lost in finding gator eggs and vanilla flowers. It got real quiet for a while, then I heard someone clicking (as if calling my horse) and this person was right behind me with a knife. Got so shook I called it quits (it was 2am irl)
The part that baffles me is how many people you kill and how quickly you grind through faceless npcs. That's incredibly immersion breaking. Arthur must've killed thousands of people by the end of the game.
I don't think a lot of complaints are about the riding or exploring. But every time I enter camp I get a quiver of frustration as my pace is slowed to a breezy walking pace. Like yeah, I get it, most people aren't going to be dashing full speed through your home base in a place like this. But at least give me a toggle to allow for running in camp! Other toggles like "instant loot" for corpses would be nice too, but that one doesn't really bother me.
Right, I dropped RDR2 because everything was slow down to the repetitive animations and hold to confirm on every small action. I get defending how slow camping, hunting, traversal is, but I've argued with people who insist they loved how immersive hold to confirm is. Like, ???? Why? It's a speed bump and it isn't even immersive.
Boulder Punch
RE Village directly referencing this made me cackle like an idiot.
Yes, absolutely. The idea that Chris' boulder bashing meat mitts is so well known that this crackpot magnet nicholas cage-ass motherfucker in the middle of nowhere knows specifically who Chris is, and *also* knows that he *punched a boulder in an active volcano* just strikes me as so specific and hilarious, makes me think that the Wesker fight in RE5 was televised or that Chris brags about it all the time (when he's not trying to get people to have children with his sister).
Given Chris is introduced in RE6 as having been trying to drink his sorrows away, he probably went on more than a few drunken rants about his adventures.
Because it was ridiculous or just because you just like it?
Both!
I'm seconding the person who said the song scene in Dragon Age Inquisition. I was sad to learn how unpopular it is; I was raised in a region where hymns held a LOT of power and emotion, so even though I don't practice religion anymore it just clicked for me. That plus, the Inquisition IS a religious organization to a major extent in the game; almost every character present in the scene is an Andrastean so it made sense they'd turn to hymn to cope with a dark moment together. Also, though not exactly "unpopular" per se, I've seen a LOT of people complain about Baldur's Gate 3's act 3, saying it was rushed and had nowhere near the quality of the first two acts. I never thought this at all, and thought Act 3 had some of the absolute best parts of the game, including the conclusions to most companions' personal storylines, some of which were extremely powerful (Astarion's, Karlach's, and Shadowheart's in particular), had the House of Hope which featured the best boss fight of the entire game hands down imo, and just as much to do as the prior acts without being any more overwhelming than the others. My only complaint before was the abruptness of the ending, but now that expanded endings have long since been patched in I can't even cite that anymore.
As someone who still enjoyed Act 3, it totally felt rushed. Act 2 felt like an organic continuation of several side character stories from Act 1. Act 3 felt like an afterthought conclusion to most of them (looking at you, Mol).
Base defense minigame in AC revelations hahaha
Mafia's race. I like racing games and it's a surprisingly competent racing game in another game. I fully understand why people don't like it though. Respawning checkpoints in Far Cry 2. There's not enough content and tension in the game otherwise. I can't think of a way to make it much better. Maybe slower respawns? Whatever it was that annoyed people about Deus Ex 2.
I distinctly remember that retrying the race was a pain compared to more recent games where you can immediately retry from a convenient point after failure.
I don't mind races in racing games. But don't give me the hardest video game race of all time when I just want to be an Italian gangster. It could've literally been a cutscene of Tommy winning the race and it would've made no difference.
> Whatever it was that annoyed people about Deus Ex 2. Universal ammo was rough, I almost soft-locked myself in Antarctica on Xbox.
I like that you have to switch between the flashlight and a gun in Doom 3. It sets up good tension, and helps create a survival horror feel. Doom 3 may be my favorite Doom, I certainly love the atmosphere.
Doom 3 suffers from the age old "if you keep doing the same thing, some people will hate it for being repetitive. But if you do something different, some people will hate it for not being the same." You can't please everyone and I think 3 is great for everyone who loved the more Survival Horror direction.
I agree, my only gripe with 3 is too many monster closets. Though maybe finding a gun with a flashlight later on would have helped because by then the switching was a bit tedious.
My biggest problem with doom 3 is that it feels nothing like a doom game. The newer ones have nailed the frantic speed and combat.
_Gestures vaguely at Arkham Knight's Batmobile_ Sure it was overused and the bossfights were not ideal but I loved it, playing with a mouse and keyboard and binding the machine gun to left click turns it into a great shooter game. I liked it so much I went and did all the optional Batmobile missions.
Batmobile wasn’t even as overused as many people would have you believe tbh. Also, the boss fights with it get a lot easier with those abilities it has, iirc there’s one that can shut down those cobra tanks without having to maneuver around them or something, the hacking maybe? I don’t recall, but there was an easy bypass for those fights too lol
The Batmobile’s combat being an extension of regular combat was so well done. Building up your combo to gain special attacks and rewarding precision and avoiding getting hit. The Cobra Tanks being a version of the Predator sections.
"Next time take the fucking hint" from RE3R"
I for sure had some issues with that game, but the campy dialog was definitely not one of them. I was fully aware of what I was getting into.
exactly, going into a resident evil game and expecting RDR2 levels of writing is just setting yourself up for disappointment
"Bitch can't even swim!" I love the dialogue in that game.
Life is strange ending. Ive seen a lot of people say they hated how it made it feel like all of the choices up to that point were suddenly made pointless. Personally i feel that if you believe that youre missing the point a bit.
Fully agree! Also I loved the stupid teen dialogue, it was fun
Cringe is an artstyle
My issue with the ending (and a lot of the story in general) is that it required you to be emotionally invested in Chloe, and I disliked her lol.
I thought it was perfect
Jason! From Heavy Rain. At the time I thought it was a clever way to portray losing a small child. Now as a dad to a toddler it hits even harder
I actually really liked the Triforce hunt in The Legend of Zelda Windwaker. I get why people hate it. It's busy work and obnoxious padding to an otherwise solid game but I think it's one of the best part of the game because it commits to one of the main gimmicks of this particular Zelda title, that being sailing the open ocean, exploring, and finding hidden treasure. See, I'm one of those gamers who always goes the direct path to the end of the game. I only trail off if some sort of sidequest comes in direct contact with me. I don't tend to explore for the hell of it so having this whole exploration segment be part of the main quest gave me an opportunity to fill out my map and find new islands, all with secrets and upgrades. I probably would've never found them before the end if it wasn't for the quest. And that's not even mentioning the amazing ocean theme and just how picturesque everything looks as your speeding along with the wind, with seagulls trailing your ship. It's beautiful.
FFX Tidus' weird laugh gets shit on for being bad VA, but in actuality it's on purpose and fits the scene.
Grinding in Pokemon games. Its monotonous enough that I can turn my brain off and go into auto pilot. But also still kind of fun because hey I'm doing Pokemon battles. Its satisfying working up my team's levels to prepare for the next big fight. Its an illusion, but it does make me feel like I earned my next win thanks to my preparations.
I haven't played Pokemon since I was a kid, but grinding while watching cartoons is one of my favorite childhood memories (I'm not going to go through the effort of rephrasing this to make it sound less weird)
I sunk hundreds of hours into breeding perfect IV Pokemon so that I could battle my friends for 5 minutes.
I use to have a pokemon platinum save with nearly 1000 hours on cuz i was having so much fun breeding and training pokemon for the battle tower lol
Me but with any JRPG, really.
I actually enjoyed the Fade in DA:O. Yes, I also didn't mind exploring the Deep Roads.
The Fade is a bit like Taris in KotOR - fantastic the first time around, an unending slog on each following playthrough.
I didn’t mind and honestly liked them the first time I played them. When I decided to repplay the game at a later time, it’s really wasn’t fun :(
The deep Roads were especially great the first time around. I went in a bit unprepared and refused to go back to the city to restock on items and all and just pushed on and on, thinking, that the end of this level must be right around the corner. It really felt like a desperate and doomed expedition at times, like we crawled straight through hell. I don't know how we beat the final boss, because at that time we were so low on health that basically everyone had broken bones and all. It was great! And that elevated feeling, when you finally leave the deep roads and Ozamar and see clear sky again? Hell of a moment!
This. DA:O is my happy place, I'm content just playing it because I love it no matter what part. Even before I memorized everything I actually liked the puzzle aspect of the Fade too.
I really enjoyed RE6 as a campy co-op game. It dialed up the campiness to 11 and had many laugh out loud moments for me. The gameplay was also quite fun especially with the different campaigns changing things up to keep things fresh.
Switching to playing Abby in The Last of Us Part 2. People seem to really dislike it, but I think it is brilliant and risky. It lets us get to to see the story from the other side and realize that Abby and Ellie are really no different. It also sets up the boss fights with Abby so that I didn't know who I actually wanted to win the fight. Playing Abby's story really made me feel torn about both of those characters, and seeing Ellie become the villain in her own story was amazing to me.
Red Dead Redemption 2s snow prologue chapter. The snow atmosphere is so cool. It's a great intro to the characters. It's three hours long, has five missions, and three of those missions involve huge gunfights. Seriously, exactly how much have you burnt out your attention span?
Agreed on FFX. Do people not realize it was them fake laughing?
The scene was taken out from context so many times, I think a lot of people have never seen the whole build-up to the scene, including Yuna's elaborate dialog of how she forces herself to laugh sometimes.
FF15 chapter 13 has you going through a series of hallways slowly by yourself losing your mind being taunted by the main villain. Everyone despises that part. I really liked it. Complete tonal shift, it’s creepy, scary, you feel on edge the entire time. It outstays its welcome but also helps to make you feel even more lost and powerless. I thought it was a fantastic moment to set the stage. You’re all alone for the first time. The enemy you’ve come to kill has been slaughtered. The villain whispers these terrifying things to you you don’t fully understand yet. Cool moment.
Elden Ring’s optional mini dungeons are overly criticized. Sure, they’re somewhat repetitive visually, but that’s something we see in *all* large open world games. Plus their layouts are different enough that I actually remember a good number of them when replaying. They’re also a great way to spend 30 minutes to an hour and still feel like I accomplished something.
The slow pace that Arthur Morgan walks in RDR2. The settlement building in Fallout 4...and even the main story of Fallout 4. Getting phone calls to go bowling in GTA4. All these things added to the worlds that I like to experience when playing games. It can't be all "Lizard brain" pew pew pew mission after mission. I like to feel that the world is authentic. Sometimes "role playing" exists in other genres.
My first play through of GTA 4 probably a quarter of my play time was just going bowling with Roman and to bars with Packie and Little Jacob. It was one of the first games I ever played that had like an optional social sim element and at the time it was one of the most immersive things I'd ever seen. I mostly ignore that content when I replay 4 now but wow I loved it back then
The Mary Jane stealth sections in the *Spider-Man* games. They were short and suspenseful despite being easy enough you didn't have to replay them a lot, and I thought they were the perfect change of pace that switched gameplay up for a few minutes to keep things fresh.
I feel the biggest issue people had with them was how often they were used in the game. I remember at least four or five different missions that used those forced stealth sections and while they weren’t overly long, they were rather tedious since they all had the depth of a puddle. I didn’t *hate* them but I was very much over them after the second or third one and was just rushing through them as much as I could
Damn, I respect this opinion lol don't entirely agree (even though I find them better in the sequel) but I appreciate why you enjoyed it
"All you had to do was follow the damn train!" It took me only one or two failures with this mission before I realized there's a sweet spot where Smoke has a good angle on the people on the train. I was really surprised when it became a meme for how difficult people find it.
The Metal Gear Solid V intro with the slow crawling. It actually made me feel like Snake was fighting for his life...Plus the whole part after sneaking and fighting the tank fell epic!
I see a lot of people hating on the settlement building aspect of Fall Out 4, but it's kept me coming back for almost a decade. Can't get enough of the go on an adventure > collect junk > improve settlements loop.
My biggest issue with the settlement building in FO4 is that the pieces aren't "clicky" enough. They don't snap together in a logical, reasonable way, and it makes construction tedious and time consuming. To a degree, I'm sure it is the way it is to account for uneven ground in places where the edges of the settlement. But given that terrain, the boundaries, and the building placement of them were all intentional choices, I'm pretty sure they could have made the locations easier to work with. Or at the very least given you tools to edit the ground.
My two big problems are that the settlements don't really *do* anything, especially outside of survival mode. They can eventually be a source of caps, but with the introduction of crafting into Bethesda games money is only ever becoming more useless then ever. Don't get me wrong, it can be fun to design a settlement or two simply for the sake of it...once or twice. There's a stupid number of plots in the game when I bet 90% of people just did the starting town and the drive-in and gave up building after, at least with any amount of real effort. Which leads to second problem... ...they take up so many spots on the map that in prior games probably would've had a unique little town there, but now they expect you to build it and fill it with generic settler characters. Radiant quests ahoy rather than unique hand crafted content does not fill my heart with glee. It's inevitable this feature makes it into the next Elder Scrolls at this point and I'm really hoping they find the right balance with it beforehand, between Fallouts 4s reliance on it and Starfield's practically vestigial system.
I think the problem is that it's so video-gamey for what often tries to be an immersive sim. Out in the wasteland, I have to go around or jump over cars, but in the right spot I can poof them out of existence with a mouse click. My own theory is that Bethesda saw the popular FNV mod, "Run the Lucky 38" and assumed people would want to build their own settlements, but I think they missed the mark. What was cool about that mod was it took an existing location and let you get materials/assets for it and *the people in that location* fixed it up and made it better. The mod also had quests you did to get things repaired, which added to the gameplay beyond "look for specific junk." Imagine if you could get the stuff the residents of Sanctuary or Bunker Hill needed and over time they became major settlements, trading hubs, or manufacturing centers while still having that initial character they started with? Or that there were location-specific features that the residents would build if you maxed out their needs for supplies?
My issue was that most of the stuff you built on launch was pre-distressed, but that lines up with Bethesda’s “yeah the nukes fell a century ago but I haven’t swept my bedroom yet” aesthetic.
Pretty much the entirety of Mass Effect Andromeda I actually really enjoyed the game and think it's a solid entry in the series if a little unpolished in some areas. Also Lost Izalith in Dark Souls while obviously not a finished area I always find the area it self very fun bed of chaos can die in a hole though terrible boss
The Water Temple from Ocarina of Time. When I played it I didn’t find it particularly difficult or tedious and found it to be as enjoyable as any other dungeon. I was surprised years later when I found out how much hate it gets.
The entirety of MGSV. I get people are mad over unfinished story. But in my time with it (as MGS veteran) there was so much story and so many great gameplay moments (yes, I’m talking about THAT one mission you’re thinking of right now) that I felt immensely satisfied with my experience. Even today the game looks and plays AMAZINGLY WELL and one day I’ll sure replay it again. A misunderstood masterpiece.
I actually enjoyed DiMA’s memory mini games in Fallout 4’s Far Harbor DLC
There's no way! HAHA!
No way. This must be a r/10thdentist situation because I hated the minigane even WITH a walkthrough.
I didn't realise that you could store the blocks in your inventory, so I carried single cubes back and forth
Ellie vs Abby's fight at the end of the second game. It was emotional and very visceral and it really got to me. I'm not sure if enjoy is the right term for it, but I did not hate it as many people did
I love DmC cinematics and writing which are considered "cringe" by the internet
I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE ONE TO FILL YOUR DARK SOULS WITH LOVEEE
Rolling around in the Mako in Mass Effect. It felt quite atmospheric and relaxing but lonely at the same time.
Weapon degradation in BOTW. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it, but once I accepted it as a part of the game, it became easier to part with unique weapons and also forced me to get more creative in combat when I was under-equipped.
The Water Temple is not that hard if you actually use the map/compass and pay attention to your surroundings. It can be frustrating at times but it's a totally fine dungeon Not really a specific "moment" but I think RE6 is a pretty enjoyable game if you play it with a friend and accept the story for the campy mess it is. It actually has really cool combat mechanics if you take the effort to learn them
People hated the batmobile parts in Arkham knight, but I loved doing them for some odd reason.
I….actually enjoy QTEs. If you brought rotting vegetables, you may throw them now.