Analyse a popular game you do not like

[astrangeone]

But just about everyone in the franchise gets that treatment. The America of GTA is portrayed as a crumbling empire populated (for the most part) by idiots, criminals, or some combination of the two. Besides the main characters, for the most part, its inhabitants are twisted caricatures of people.

Plus, the games even mock "family values", anti-gay types far more viciously than any other group.

Not to mention, the franchise has its fair share of gay characters that are shown in a fairly positive light. Florian's camp, sure, but it's also clear that playing it up is a part of his coping mechanism for the horrors he's live through, and he's the only person from Niko's squad who was able to distance himself from his past and put the violence behind him. Gay Tony serves as a father figure to Luis, and he's consistently shown to be a competent, intelligent businessman (his drug problem notwithstanding).

It seems like you're looking for persecution and malice that just isn't there. It's like getting mad at South Park - there are no sacred cows. Everyone's a target and everyone gets their lumps.

I'm not mad at GTA, I'm just slightly perplexed by it. You are right, GTA portrays America like a free for all with everyone being a "durrrrrh, I'm an idiot", criminal elements, or just distasteful apathetic human beings. It's a great game for stress relief - you kill dumb people by the dozens and it's satisfying because of the way they are portrayed - as hateful, idiotic people. The main characters are usually portrayed as someone who is just trying to get ahead in life, especially in a corrupt world - they are kind of heroes in that sense. I'm just perplexed at why the games and the series is so popular - it's a really dark and twisted world, and maybe some players get a thrill by doing illegal things in the game?

I feel the game "The Ballad of Gay Tony" was a response by Rockstar to try to offset some of the distasteful atmosphere by the rest of the games. Criminal organizations usually don't like gay or lesbian individuals because they sprung out of old-world values. Look at the Yakuza or the Mafia, or even the Triad. Huge organizations that came about because of values of loyalty, obedience and "killer instinct".

I like the series enough to own two copies of it. The original GTA and GTA Chinatown Wars. It's just that I spend more time on games that aren't as dark and twisted as this one. I have to be in a really dark mood or cynical mood to be wanting to play GTA to completion.

 

[Gahars]

I'm just perplexed at why the games and the series is so popular - it's a really dark and twisted world, and maybe some players get a thrill by doing illegal things in the game?

Beyond the well made campaigns, causing havoc and chaos is a great way to release and vent stress. Sometimes it's just fun to hop in a tank and tear down main street, crushing everything in your path. Sometimes it's fun to race around the city at blistering speeds. The series gives you a lot of freedom to do with the world as you please - people appreciate that.

That's why the games present a twisted, crapsack world just close enough to our own to be recognizable. The casual crimes and sprees would be horrific in a realistic environment populated by sympathetic people.

Criminal organizations usually don't like gay or lesbian individuals because they sprung out of old-world values. Look at the Yakuza or the Mafia, or even the Triad. Huge organizations that came about because of values of loyalty, obedience and "killer instinct".

...Hence the nickname "Gay Tony" - he's an outlier, an exception, and he's branded for it by others. The game makes no qualms about this fact.

 

[Deleted member 473940]

Am I gonna die if I mention this?

Portal 1 and 2: never really got into it. The puzzles and what not.. isnt it annoying? The whole game to me has the same pace.. then again I never played the whole game cuz I got annoyed and bored. Never really into puzzles and anything like that.

 

[Gahars]

The puzzles and what not.. isnt it annoying?

It's a puzzle game. That's kind of the entire point.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Portal 1 and 2: never really got into it. The puzzles and what not.. isnt it annoying? The whole game to me has the same pace.. then again I never played the whole game cuz I got annoyed and bored. Never really into puzzles and anything like that.

my sides

That's like saying "The platforming in Mario... Isn't that annoying?"

 

[xist]

The Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past

I'm well aware that this is a game that's sacrosanct to many, but as someone who has only experienced it in the last couple of years it's nothing special and doesn't hold up (even within it's own series). That's not to say that at the time of release it wouldn't have been amazing compared to it's competitors and that it offered an experience that was unusual and fun, but playing it for the first time today (after Minish Cap) it felt devoid of all the things that people rave about. It lacks a compelling narrative (don't say that it's because of the age of the game - Ys on the Master System had a great narrative), it features a relatively empty and boring world, and everything feels kind of repetitive after a while because it's dependent upon gameplay that has aged and varies only slightly. Where Minish Cap featured many of the same mechanics it managed to involve the player much more, and reduced the sense of repetition by varying things up more (as did the aforementioned Ys).

I've played precisely 3 Zelda games (Minish Cap, Lttp and Phantom Hourglass) and for me LttP really fails to ignite any passion that others cite. However, i DO understand that it's a game that many grew up with and it occupies a place in many peoples hearts as a formative gaming experience. That means it's hard to remain purely objective and not nostalgic. On it's own merits i don't feel it holds up for someone who doesn't have that nostalgia, especially when compared to other games that offer similar experiences.

I'll go get my armour plated box to hide in now...

 

[Aeter]

The story started getting too complicated and the game has been showing traces of discrimination for quite some time, be it against females, homossexuals, black people, chinese, latinos and foreigners in general

Don't forget Elvis impersonators, gotta respect Elvis impersonators.

 

[UltraHurricane]

can't really say anything about all the others, except maybe Kingdom Hearts

the first game was fantastic even if it was kinda weird, but yeah... the plot somehow started to make less sense with each new installment, like Gahars said it has one of the most convoluted plots in any piece of fiction. Seriously, does Square honestly expect kids (who are suppose to be the target audience btw) to have the patience to understand let alone comprehend the weird as hell pseudo-philosophy about hearts, darkness, nothingness or whatever other crap Nomura pulls out of his ass?

It use to be pretty cool to see Disney and Final Fantasy characters together... not sure why there together but it made for a neat premise but even that aspect of the series has fallen by the way side for animu melodrama with their own characters that just happened to be sprinkled with disney/FF cameos. I think the only thing the series has going for it is the gameplay and even then it goes into "press-A-for-seizure-inducing-hack-and-slash-acrobatics" most of the time

 

[Aeter]

can't really say anything about all the others, except maybe Kingdom Hearts

It can be about any popular game that you do not like, why can't people read?!

 

[PolloDiablo]

Tetris - gravity sucks

 

[Deleted member 158512]

The Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past
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I think the same can be said for a lot of "amazing/innovative at the time, but just nostalgia trap now" games. I don't even think criticizing LTTP is controversial anymore, but touch Ocarina of Time and you're asking for a shitstorm. There is, however, something to be said about the amazing narrative laid out by the opening sequences of LTTP, but sadly the rest of the game does not follow up as well (maybe a little bit after the Dark/Mirror World or whatever).

Personally, my pick is the Zelda series as a whole. I have played (not to completion / more than 7 hours of each): Link to the Past, Oracle of Seasons, Spirit Tracks, Phantom Hourglass, and Majora's Mask, and (to completion) Link's Awakening and Ocarina of Time.

The Good: Structured gameplay - uncover dungeons, get the treasure-of-the-week, complete puzzles based on treasure, fight boss (often based on treasure), twitchy action gameplay, vast world with lots of little secrets to discover (though mostly health/item bonuses).

The Bad: Repetitive puzzles, many sokoban-type puzzles, managing prickly little enemies while dealing with said boring puzzles, too many "one-time" treasures coupled with a clunky interface (haven't played the newer (?) games, but the older ones let you equip like 3 items at a time tops?). By 'one-time' treasure I mean those big treasures that you acquire through tough puzzles or a mini-boss fight, only to use it once or twice in the game. A better game would incorporate these items into multiple puzzles, but the Zelda titles usually stick to boomerang/hookshot (arrows)/bomb while other treasures are just 'metroid-vania' style power increases (now you can smash bigger rocks!) or go unused after the dungeon you found them in is completed.

My Gripes:

-Besides the aforementioned treasure thing, the repetitive style of play, while comfortably formulaic, leaves me dead bored after the first five dungeons or so (not-quite half the game, but my god, you should have hooked me by that point). My hype level seriously goes from, "Oh man, this is fun, solid, manageable gameplay!) to "This is a complete waist of time, I have more fun seeing a tiny level increase in a JRPG than I do playing through another goddamn sokoban puzzle" in the span of a few dungeons.

-While minor Metroid-vania exploration is required (oh sweet, I can walk on water now!) to get a lot of the health and item upgrades, serious backtracking (despite the game-world itself being non-linear...) is only really done once per game: during the big item trade-off. This is an event that happens once per Zelda game, where you must trade one pointless item at a time to several different NPCs scattered throughout the world, until one finally coughs up the ultimate dungeon key (or whatever the prize happens to be in that particular game).

The Zelda games aren't bad, per se, and I acknowledge the brilliant things each one has done (LTTP and OOT: subtle narrative, OOT: horse-riding/deep 3D world, Awakening: console experience on a frankly ancient handheld), but all the energy people put into holding up the series as some kind of shining beacon as to what makes a solid fantasy/action/adventure game is ridiculous. It's also become synonymous with poseur gamers - I love poseurs, and I love gamers (sort-of..), but my god, keep your ironic hipster Zelda shirts away from me.

It's kind of sad that after over 20 years of advances in gaming and constant retooling of the series, it is completely blown out of the water by the unabashed copycat Okami. Okami's battles had depth, and in turn, they kept those battles far far away from its puzzles which, while not difficult, were visually spectacular. You feel like a kid in a candy store any time you do ANYTHING in Okami, while the fanfare of grabbing a heart piece in Zelda remains the same mediocre affair that it did two decades ago. Okami would surely suffer the same fate had it gotten a proper sequel, but for a Zelda clone, the original sure as hell kept my attention from beginning to end.


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To the topic creator's original analysis of Monster Hunter: I know many people who enjoy the game, and all of them play multiplayer. If you have to play alone, that is reason enough to ignore the series. When you think of all the possibilities of playing with a team (trapping monsters, tracking them through different quadrants, teaming up, boxing them in, utilizing traps effectively), it's a wonder why there are solo players at all.

 

[ggyo]

MGS: People possibly don't understand what's going on in the game.
Pokemon: Complainers are adults who don't want to admit that they like Pokemonz in front of their friends or on forums. In reality, they're dying to get their hands on the latest game.
Monster Hunter: Never played it
Kingdom Hearts: They have like 50 games and they really need to end it.
CoD single player: It's CoD, people who hate it, hate it. People who like it, like it.

I co-sign everything here.

MGS: I couldn't really enjoy the stories of the games until post-grade 10 history class. Then I was mad in love with all the plotlines.

Pokemon: I do this all the time. I hate the game in public, adore the game in my bedroom, and shun the game on line (see PokemonXY thread).

Monster Hunter: Okay, I was reluctant to play the games until about 4-5 years ago. All I ever saw were raptors n shit on the cases, and I thought it was some geeky dinosaur game. I was really impatient with the slow start of Tri (my first MH game), and really frustrated with the difficulty of the Great Jaggi, and then I realized the point of battles was about not getting hit instead of slashing your foe up at every second. Now I'm HR 50-some, have full Alat armour... and a game that doesn't have an online server anymore.

Kingdom Hearts: These games are mediocre... I don't understand their appeal and would love it if someone explained it to me. I tried 358/2, BBS, 1, 2, and they're all so inaccessible (besides 1), and they all have terrible plots, terrible characters, terrible voice acting, boring and repetitious hack-n-slash combat, etc. I always felt that the only people who could enjoy them are people who can't stand a challenge and enjoy playing through a game with the button X.

CoD: I'm indifferent to it. The people who hate it, are really mad at it's wide influence and popularity, not the game itself. People who like it... have a reason.

 

[Joe88]

pokemon
just recycling the same game over and over again
new trainer starts out on his journey, has a rival he/she faces throughout the game, encounters some bad guys who steal pokemon and single handily takes them down and continues on his way to beat the pokemon league
add insult to injury by releasing 2 versions of the exact same game and only a few different pokemon in each game so people will have to buy both to "catch em all", then a year or 2 later release the same game again this time with minor updates
rinse and repeat

cod
I cant tell any of them apart since mw1
first had good mp and all but when you rehash the same game 5 (an now a 6th) times just for a quick cash in?

monster hunter
granted this is really only popular in japan and has a small following everywhere else
the controls are clunkly and horrible, I fail to see the appeal in it

 

[xist]

Okami would surely suffer the same fate had it gotten a proper sequel, but for a Zelda clone, the original sure as hell kept my attention from beginning to end.

Now i enjoyed Okami too, from the characters, the artistry, the setting, story and gameplay mechanics (played on a PS2) but i do have to say that it failed miserably at keeping my attention. And for a game that's generally fun how can that be possible? In Okami's case i think it dragged on for about 10-15 hours too long. It just became ridiculous...and i'm a fan of long RPG's, but for Okami blew it's load and didn't manage to hold my attention because in the last (long) stretch it felt like a slog.

 

[beta4attack]

Kingdom Hearts: These games are mediocre... I don't understand their appeal and would love it if someone explained it to me. I tried 358/2, BBS, 1, 2, and they're all so inaccessible (besides 1), and they all have terrible plots, terrible characters, terrible voice acting, boring and repetitious hack-n-slash combat, etc. I always felt that the only people who could enjoy them are people who can't stand a challenge and enjoy playing through a game with the button X.

Umm no? That's not true at the slightest. I really like KH games to the point it's one of my favorite franchises as, in my opinion, it has an interesting plot and I like some of the characters. KH is either a hit or miss, but that doesn't mean people who play it aren't open for challenge. Not to mention, it's just a bit fast-based compared to other RPGs I played so it's something quite fun for me. I've tackled MH, for example, even when people say it needs patience and time to master it and its controls, and I did. Saying people lack the feeling of challenge because they play certain games is irrelevant.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

I thought Kingdom Hearts was rather shit and follows the trend of some JRPGs where they confuse "complexity" in plot with "convolution" in plot. See FFX for example.

Also the aesthetic was annoying and it fell into an awkward middleground of trying to keep a "younger" appeal and an "older" appeal. So it ends up being a dark game with random poorly written slapstick. Tonally the game is an absolute mess.

I also just found the gameplay to be rather simplistic and boring.

The "mash up" between the two universes ends up being entirely useless. Like there's no explanation on why Final Fantasy characters are there, they just are there and have little relevance to the whole scheme of the game. It's literally just fanservice because games with Final Fantasy stapled onto it sell. It's not like an actual crossover game like Marvel vs. Capcom where the whole draw is seeing two franchises in full force together, it's kinda like a Disney game but randomly you see Squall (also seriously, out of every Final Fantasy characters, you chose fucking Squall?) walking across the background.

 

[xist]

I think i'm playing Kingdom Hearts wrong. Whilst there are all these melodramatic and overarching themes of a nefarious organisation and a group of evil? (Not sure that's right but i'll go with it) individuals i've always just seen Kingdom Hearts as a tale of friendship and love triumphing over adversity. All the crazy somewhat poorly thought out stuff is just there in the background behind the journeys of young people going on a voyage of discovery.

Maybe i've been over sentimental (or under analysing) but i see Kingdom Hearts games primarily as a bond of friendship rather than a complex tale of intrigue.

 

[Deleted member 158512]

Now i enjoyed Okami too, from the characters, the artistry, the setting, story and gameplay mechanics (played on a PS2) but i do have to say that it failed miserably at keeping my attention. And for a game that's generally fun how can that be possible? In Okami's case i think it dragged on for about 10-15 hours too long. It just became ridiculous...and i'm a fan of long RPG's, but for Okami blew it's load and didn't manage to hold my attention because in the last (long) stretch it felt like a slog.

I feel that, I certainly thought it was going to end before it did, but I stuck it out anyway. Seems not every Zelda-like can break the tedium curse.

RE Kingdom Hearts: While I thought the original was great (if long-winded in the end with nonsense battles against invisible enemies that took forever despite being easy), the story itself has spun way out of control. It used to be so straight forward, but, in true Japanese shounen manga (think DBZ) style, they just had to tack on a bunch of dumb enemies, orginizations, sequels, prequels and open plotholes to draw out into a series what should have been a single-entry title.

 

[ggyo]

Umm no? That's not true at the slightest. I really like KH games to the point it's one of my favorite franchises as, in my opinion, it has an interesting plot and I like some of the characters. KH is either a hit or miss, but that doesn't mean people who play it aren't open for challenge. Not to mention, it's just a bit fast-based compared to other RPGs I played so it's something quite fun for me. I've tackled MH, for example, even when people say it needs patience and time to master it and its controls, and I did. Saying people lack the feeling of challenge because they play certain games is irrelevant.

Instead of saying it's not true, TELL ME WHY PLEASE. KH is the style of game I really enjoy, but the experience is so shallow right from the start that I never continue with the game, because I don't expect anything deeper.

Is the story NOT complicated?
Can you NOT complete just about every battle with simple hack-n-slashing?
Is there even a world to explore, or is it constant "stages" of limited thought-invested puzzles and tons of repetitive battles?
Does the music captivate you?
Are the characters NOT over dramatic? Do they even rarely display non-basic emotions outside of anger, happiness or sadness?
Does the voice acting NOT suck?

I really can't see a reason to like the game.

Every RPG is based around the story (and characters), the gameplay (and battling), and the world (and exploration), and every video game is based around visual and audible appeal.
As an RPG, the story is notoriously bad post-KH1, the gameplay is repetitious pseudo-platform hack-n-slash battling, and the world is quite literally as interesting as a Disney world( which is fine for children, if that was the target audience) and there isn't a big world with towns and people to explore (to my understanding. I have never gotten deep into a KH game). It's all stages.
As a video game, the graphics are typical of a JRPG, not gorgeous, and nothing special (but of course it hasn't met current generation consoles yet), and the music is alright. I'm a fan of the J-Pop themes, but everything else is just generic JRPG music.

There. I broke it down to a SCIENCE (and no, science doesn't exclusively mean biology, chemistry, physics, etc. I'm talking about deeper understanding). I don't want to dictate my LIMITED EXPERIENCE with the games as facts, so please tell me if I'm wrong.

Out of precaution; this is not a personal attack on your ego. Don't project your emotions at me because you disagree.

 

[Yepi69]