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.
I have a lot of childhood nostalgia for Donkey Kong 64. If you were a kid who could only get a new game every few months or so, this giant behemoth of a game will last a long time.
But it undeniably is a bloated clusterfuck, the internet is not wrong in hindsight.
Next thing that comes to mind for me is the GBA port of Tales of Phantasia. Symphonia was a huge part of my adolescent years, and as soon as I heard this was getting a GBA remake I was all over it. Loved it, and didn’t hear until much later that GBA is apparently considered the worst version of the game. If PSP ever gets translated, I’d love to see what I missed out on…
I wonder if a fan mod of DK64 where the bananas aren’t colored would fix many of the problems. I feel like that one small change might fix a lot of complaints. I haven’t played it though.
There’s a ROM hack that let’s you swap characters with a button press rather than trek through the level to find a swap barrel and then trek back again, and do that again and again for coins, bananas, etc.
Small change that has a big impact on the replayability.
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4961/
If I ever do a DK64 playthrough I’ll check this out.
hbomberguy did a 50+ hour 101% nightmare stream for trans charity a while back and I watched the whole thing. I would not subject myself to playing that game but damn it was interesting to see.
DK64 for me too. I played the shit out of it for probably a solid 6 months to a year and loved it but it has no doubt aged badly.
Honestly the collectathon genre as a whole doesn’t hold up much these days. A few modern games pull it off here and there, but going back and trying to play any of the classic Rare titles feels like a slog.
Loved all those games as a kid, and they did a ton to shape the industry, but they don’t really hold up.
Bro what people didn’t like DK64? I spent a large chunk of my childhood getting 100% in that game. Lanky Kong was my boy.