I’m talking about games that you still like but you had no idea were criticized so much.
The perfect example for me is Sonic Unleashed.
I admit that the game has its bad things, but I would have never imagined that it was so hated at the time… Although, that could be extended to the entire Sonic franchise, since for many years I was not aware at all of that “Sonic was never good”, “Sonic had a rough transition to 3D” nonsense.
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Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood and cyberpunk 2077 (PC) not too long after release
Most games that dont scale into 100+ hours. I never reach that point anyway.
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey apparently, according to reddit a few years ago, was looked at as being shitty I guess? Not the best one?
It’s the only one I played, and I played it 3 times with ~240 hours. Kassandra is my favorite character ever, in any video game. I loved the world, its beauty, the ships and sea, and shooting arrows through rocks as a demo god.
I’ve still not touched any other assassins game.
Odyssey was really good in a vacuum. Ive heard it described best as that it was a good action RPG set in Greece, but not a good Assassins Creed game. The main issue being that stealth was usually a huge focus in previous titles, but this one seemed to favor general combat and didnt even have the signature wrist blade until the DLC. Also a bunch of the story seemed to return pieces of previous lore, some setup in just the previous game that came out a year prior. Overall though I did enjoy the game!
Yeah I think you’re right with it being good in a vacuum. That makes complete sense because it was different than the other games.
I have panic disorder, so most games with combat overwhelm me as I’m just constantly afraid. I never got that with this game. Just give me a bow so i can stand hella far away and clear the area before entering it. Thats how I did stealth. I’d take an hour slowly picking off everyone from the fort. Plus, it was really beautiful and emersive. Exploring the map was super fun.
Final Fantasy 8. I loved it but apparently I was in the minority.
FF8 has been going through a bit of a resurgence lately where it does seem to be getting a fair amount of praise. It used to get slated though.
8 is a very solid game. The issue is that it was always compared to 7 and 9
I still love it.
Kings quest 8. Universally panned as a “bad Kings quest game” and I agree, It’s a terrible entry to the kings quest series. But when you look at this quirky adventure game from a modern perspective you can see it was really ahead of it’s time. It has an unmatched vibe and atmosphere.
Might and Magic 6-8. Thought it’s the best game ever during my childhood. Turns out it was pretty bad. Still like it (nostalgy)
I rented Superman 64 as a kid, never knowing it was a universally hated game. We had fun with the weird multiplayer mode where you fly around in weird pod things. I remember flying through the rings too. The whole game makes zero sense in hindsight.
The game became that shitshow because Warner Bros execs got pissed that a “no-name” yuropeean company got the rights to make a licensed Superman game (because they were the only company that bothered to bid), so they did a lot of time-wasting requests to the developers.
https://www.retrojunk.com/a/C1CKNP9rjC/the-story-behind-superman-64
what console version of Sonic unleashed did you play? i have heard that the wii version is probably the best because, despite the motion control gooberness, it cuts out maybe tons of annoying open world busywork and overly long levels due to the Wii not having enough storage space or whatever
The PS2 version, which i think is kinda the same as the Wii version. It was my first PS2 game ever too.
I really enjoyed Mass Effect: Andromeda.
I will continue to defend Andromeda. Yes it has its flaws, but no more than the original trilogy. It could’ve been the start of a cool new trilogy.
E.T.
Yes really. I played it all the time as a kid and didn’t think it was any more difficult or abstract than the rest of the 2600’s catalogue. Granted, we kept the manual, which made a huge difference in understanding and enjoying its bizarre logic, but still. I had no idea it was so hated until at least a decade later.
it was actually way ahead of its time, for a game. One small bug (the workaround for which was in the manual) ruined its reputation. But I genuinely think it was a good game.
Also written in 6 weeks by one guy. Freaking impressive
What was the bug and workaround? :)
when climbing out of the pit, it was very easy to immediately fall back down (due to the pixel-perfect collision detection).
And here is an excerpt from the manual: “Even experienced extraterrestrials sometimes have difficulty levitating out of wells. Start to levitate E.T. by first pressing the controller button and then pushing your Joystick forward. E.T.'s neck will stretch as he rises to the top of the well (see E.T. levitating in Figure 1). Just when he reaches the top of the well and the scene changes to the planet surface (see Figure 2), STOP! Do not try to keep moving up. Instead, move your Joystick right, left, or to the bottom. Do not try to move up, or E.T. might fall back into the well.”
Wow yeah. That must have been a really infuriating gameplay issue, no wonder players were upset with it.
A shame the game was so rushed or I’m sure the dev would have fixed that in code.
he was forced to release it quickly to coincide with the film’s release. For comparison, it used to take a team of devs a couple of months to make a game. He had 6 weeks.
Also, if you read the manual, this essentially never happened to you. It was easy to avoid.
You also needed to read the manual. The game did stuff that other games at the time didn’t, for example, a contextual button. You couldn’t know what would happen unless you read the manual to learn what the icons meant. A lot of people never did and so decided that the game was bad.
Yeah, I played it as a teenager on emulation and was pretty mystified at why it was considered so much worse than the other things available on the system. Why would people love Adventure but hate this?
i bought an original cartridge and played it on the vcs i iherited from dad
The first Call of Duty game I played was Ghosts, and it may have coloured my perception of what the series is about. Bombastic popcorn munching action that goes in one ear and straight out of the other. I was like “eeeeh it’s okay”. After playing some older ones I was like “well I’m sure it was groundbreaking at the time”. (Hm. Did I ever finish MW2? And I think I put Black Ops 2 on hold after the first mission. Loved Advanced Warfare tho!)
Dying Light 2. It was definitely different than the first game, but I enjoyed many of the changes. My buddies and I spent a lot of time just running around killing Volatiles, and having a blast while doing so. But apparently a lot of the changes were deeply unpopular with fans of the first game.
I played the first game and thought it was okay but not great. What were the changes? Maybe they’ll suit me since I’m not so attached to the original.
The parkour handled slightly differently, and that angered a lot of the fans from the first game. They also drastically changed the way the grapple worked. The combat was also slightly different, (critics would say simplified) so it tended to be more straightforward.
The first game had you doing a lot of jumping and diving just to survive, whereas the second game gave you some more survival options to avoid getting trapped by mobs. You could absolutely still do the jumping and diving if you wanted, but it wasn’t as critical anymore.
Honestly less frantic gameplay sounds good to me, I got sick of the “oh god they’re after me now I fell oh well try again” parts of the gameplay. I might take a look. Thanks!
Dead Space 3. Sure, it has some issues, but I didn’t realize how much others actively disliked it until I tried talking to people about it.
Dead Space is one of those series where the first 2 games set the expectations UNBELIEVABLY high. So high, in fact, that the developers were actually terrified they couldn’t live up to the legend, and were terrified they were gonna make a bad game that ruined the series. But they were gonna try their damndest.
And then EA executives came along, and they saw that “”“all the rage”“” those days was in Co-Op action shooters a-la Resident Evil 5/6 and Army Of 2, or Gears of War, and they DEMANDED that Dead Space 3 be “”“more like that”“”, or else. So they did it, and were also forced to shove microtransactions into the game with crafting materials.
The end result? Dead Space 3 was an… alright 3rd-person action-horror co-op shooter. Not great, not terrible, but… alright. An above-average shade of mediocre, certainly worth playing on its own merits, both mechanically and plot-wise, but not much more than that. A perfectly OK game.
And an absolutely TERRIBLE Dead Space game. Previous installments sold millions on multiple platforms. DS3… didn’t, and it ended up killing the studio.
dead space 3 took Isaac and Ellie from the previous games, made them kinda stupid bimbos, and put them into a high school slasher with a love triangle. they also had to sell 5 million copies to be considered profitable by EA, which was more than the previous two games’ sales combined
Too human. I loved it so much I don’t know why people hate it
Same, as a kid i had no idea if the controversy to and was still waiting on a sequel for some time after. I thought it was a novel idea and it was my first proper foray into Norse mythology.
Super Mario Sunshine. I thought it was just hard as a kid. Come to learn it’s fucking broken.
I’ve just learned about it right now. I loved it but I thought that it was a skill issue, I’m not a great player overall.
Wait, people hate it? I still do nostalgia playthroughs occasionally, one of my favs for GC.
There were so many issues
- Final boss was lame and level leading to it was slow and tedious completely killing the momentum
- Camera system was wonky
- Rocket nozzle barely got any play
- Jet nozzle was too difficult to control to be useful outside of specific racing segments
- Pachinko machine physics were fucked
- The lily pad level was unfairly difficult
- There was no way to track which blue coins you found. Like even a grey coin marker for already collected coins would have been super helpful.
- The reward for getting blue coins was pathetic
- Yoshi was criminally underutilized. The whole juice mechanic was used like twice.
The whole thing just felt rushed. Like there was another third of the game that they didn’t get to make.
If I remember right, both Legend of Zelda Windwaker and Mario Sunshine were either rushed to an end or released early, leading both to come out unfinished. I the details on why are hazy, but I think they were pushed to try and make up for poor sales of the Gamecube at large or to make up for other gaps in the schedule.
