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.
Thief 3. I had never played a Thief game before and thought it was great. Apparently, fans of the first two games were disappointed with it at first. I think the criticism didn’t last long, though. Everyone now seems to agree that it was good.
It’s a good game. Just not as good as the first two, that’s all. Many attributed it to the console release dumbing down the mechanics.
But, oh man, The Shalebridge Cradle is so awesome even if the rest of the games sucked so much as to be unplayable, that mission alone could redeem it.
At the time my parents were away on holiday or something. So I dragged my PC and awesome sound system upstairs and hooked them up to the big TV, ironically getting closer to the console experience. Darkening the whole room and getting immersed in the game was so awesome. And the Cradle scared the everliving shit out of me.
Good times.
Do you mean Thief: Deadly Shadows? That was the 3rd game in the series, and from what I understand it was pretty well received. The orphanage level alone is so highly regarded that it has its own Wikipedia page.
Now the 2014 reboot, just titled Thief, that was so poorly received the it basically killed the series. It might have been a decent game, but it was not a good Thief game.
Yes, I meant Deadly Shadows. It was liked overall, and moreso as the years went on, but I remember plenty of people thinking it was disappointing at the time. Heck, there’s one in this very thread. :P I haven’t played the first two (and I know that I need to), but I know that it deviated from those quote a bit, and that seemed to be one of the main things people disliked about it.
I must have missed that negative sentiment entirely. I played all three and had no complaints. Did some searching, and apparently a lot of the gripes were related to levels being cut down in size / broken down into pieces to allow for a console release (strict memory requirements). Also I think they changed engines for the 3rd game, or at least a lot of people complain that movement and controls were worse in DS. I guess ignorance is bliss, cause I enjoyed them all.
The best (only good?) part of Thief 2014 was the asylum level. The devs should have just made a horror game from start to finish instead of the watered down Dishonored that we got.