Games We Hate That Everyone Else Loves

[@nintendocal5767]

I must admit... I was playing Celeste again for the first time in a while to record some gameplay for this episode & I liked it more than I remembered. Dangit.

[@RejeraTheMage]

Caught in 4k

[@LevelUpPod_]

Got 'im

[@RejeraTheMage]

Alright. I have a lot to say on this. (And as I predicted on twitter, I agree with Murph across the board except for the MGS3 take, but that's only because I haven't played any MGS games besides revengence if that even counts.) I'll comment on a few that I have things to add to the discussion on. Celeste: I like challenge and I like platformers, but I'm not into the insane "kaizo" platformer stuff because that just devolves into memorizing the level. Celeste makes the levels bite size puzzles that require you to flex your mastery of the game mechanics. They use the simple abilities to gradually build off of gameplay elements to guide you to the end and dying isn't too punishing (except for near the end). If you don't like that, there's not much Celeste will do for you. Dark souls: similar to what was said, Fromsoft doesn't make hard games. They make punishing games that have hard parts to them. I've bounced off of Fromsoft games a lot because they have a lot of "cheap" deaths baked into getting to the *actual* hard part, the bosses. I have no issue with the difficulty of the bosses. My issue is the difficulty and design of the rest of the world and the "normal" enemies. Not to mention that if you die, you not only lose progress by being taken back to a bonfire, you lose progress via the leveling system as well. Losing souls on death isn't fun, has never been fun, and quite simply makes the game more of a slog. I kept wondering why I love Monster Hunter but never could like "souls likes" even though the combat feels similar. It's because souls likes are often mistaking being punishing for being difficult. God of War: I feel like Sony character action games in general are just the next Ubisoft. Games that copy paste a formula with mild tweaks because that's what sells. The Last of Us, God of War, The Spiderman games, etc. modern Sony games often go for an emotionally gripping story and flashy gameplay. The problem is that it feels too formulaic after you've played one, and the gameplay in those games is so shallow that you have experienced everything you need to experience in the first 2 hours. They may give you a new ability here and there but it never builds on what they first present you. I really enjoyed Spider-Man, I got through 3 or 4 hours of The Last of Us, and didn't even make it more than 2 hours into GoW. They are all mild variations on the same formula despite the very different coat of paint. Mario 64: I feel like Mario 64 is very much the OoT of Mario as both of you sort of said. Mario 64 is somewhat barren compared to the other games in the 3d Mario series. In the other games, you are always interacting with something or discovering something. Bouncing off of the roof of tents or scaling the rooftops of isle delfino, collecting bits, stomping enemies, or slingshotting to other planets in galaxy. Comparatively, M64 is just barren. You move through a lot of empty, uninteresting space with not much to interact with besides trying to get through it as quickly as you can. It also has the "sonic problem" where it is fun to play when you have a sense of momentum and speed but as soon as it makes you slow down, it feels bad to play. I feel like the DS version of Mario 64 solves some of these problems with its addition of multiple characters and a few other things, but the camera is still bad.

[@RejeraTheMage]

For what it's worth, I'll throw my 3 games in as well. 1. Mario Odyssey - I like how MO feels to play, but I very much don't like the structure. In previous Mario games, they would use a common area but modify it into a specific challenge for that star, shrine, whatever. Collecting the moons doesn't feel satisfying, it feels like busy work. Often the most difficult part was finding them, and that is the worst part of the game to me. I play a platformer because I want to platform and get a symbol of my accomplishment at the end. Not stumble into a random shiny thing because I looked under the right rock or jumped on this one pyramid a specific way. Coming off of the expertly crafted experiences of Mario Galaxy, Odyssey was a massive disappointment to me. Dragon Age: Origins A compelling story with gameplay that just feels poorly executed. Real time combat with pause can be done well, but the encounter balancing in DAO feels awful. You are either rolling the enemy no problem or getting one shot. Your own character abilities often aren't super impactful or interesting, and trying to micromanage your team during the middle of a fight is a pain. You should just be able to use hotkeys to use your parties abilities. Why do I need to pause the game, swap to their character, then use the ability, then swap back to my character, then unpause? Final Fantasy 7: The graphics? Wack. The random encounters that provide minimal xp but pad the game time? Wack. The story that likes to completely leave the main plot behind for 10 hours chunks of time? Wack. The game dumping you into an area without any direction on what you need to do to progress and requiring moonlogic to get the "story" going again? Wack. I played through half of FF7 and outside of some fun boss fights and a few cool moments, the story is scatterbrained and takes unrelated tangents that ultimately result in nothing happening. There are multiple instances where it drops you into a place with no prompting of what to do next and expects you to talk to the right people in the right sequence to get things going again. And by "going again" I mean taking you to the next location while they still haven't explained why you are going here in the first place. And while you are wandering around trying to figure out where to go, you are thrown into easy random encounters that do nothing except give you barely any XP and take up time. FF7 feels like an outdated RPG that has been readily outclassed by the average RPG released today but is still held as some sort of gold standard for 1 or 2 story moments and a heavy dose of nostalgia.

[@lunarlovespell]

i agree so much with hating dark souls which is funny because i adore dark souls 3 & the genre at large, something about the jank and clunk of ds1 feels downright terrible to play