Analyse a popular game you do not like

[FAST6191]

New forum game of sorts.

Around here we often see "I really do not like ?" when ? is a popular game that sells millions, gets a lot of critical acclaim and on paper looks exactly like something you might like (usually the only way to work things up to a true dislike).

Now many people have provided reasons but others are left without them so I thought it might be interesting to see what happens if people do play and cover in a bit of detail why they do not like them.

Popular games that frequently get this
Metal Gear Solid
Pokemon
Kingdom Hearts
Monster Hunter (though popular might be a stretch here)
COD single player.

In honour of this I shall be grabbing one of the PSP monster hunter games and giving it a go but I thought I might as well kick this off in case others had something worth sharing. On monster hunter it should be everything I like given that I really like roguelikes, like complex crafting systems, like thoughtful combat, like active combat, enjoy new and interesting monsters and basically everything Monster Hunter claims to be on paper and many things its fans claim it to be. However even after putting many hours into the game, trying later stage saves (both of which are problems game design had examples of solving in the 16 bit era and before), reading guides, watching videos and generally doing pretty much all I can to have a good time with the game (certainly things that have turned things around before when I was about to dismiss a game) I was really not having a good time.
However this still says little so for mine I will be pulling things apart at various levels, I doubt it is any one thing but it could be a convergence of unfavourable patterns in drop rates, experience gains, hit percentages and so forth with suspect controls that sees me dismiss it.

 

[The Catboy]

Honestly my main complaint for CoD (and 90% of the FPS's nowadays) is that I have hard time seeing what's going on in them. I mess around the video settings in both the game and my TV, but I just can't see what's going on. I actually do have eye problems.
Whenever I do find that right TV with those right settings and I get the chance to play them, they're OK. They're not the worst possible game I ever played, but they aren't my cup of tea.
I do find the single player to be a bit short though, which is rather disappointing that they focus so much on the online multiplayer vs spending at least the same amount of time working on the single player.

As for the others.
MGS: I haven't played enough of them to give a fair judgement on them.
Pokemon: Clearly I am still a huge fan of them and thus have a bias.
Monster Hunter: Same as MGS.
Kingdom Hearts: They have their ups and downs, but overall I actually quite enjoy them. I do however wish they would just finish instead of milking them dry like they have been.

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah that is a fairly large barrier to entry. Having not encountered it beyond times where the sun shifts from behind the pillar and onto the TV (a problem solved by closing the curtains) I am not sure what I can say there.
That said I would be up for a bit more being unable to see my enemy but the "5 years of boredom, 3 hours of hell" thing probably would not make for a great game and would certainly impact the "I R one man ninja king army" thing many games seem to aim for. Hell I would probably even take a bit more "your enemy might be anywhere up or down" rather than the "if you are looking up or down it is a setpiece/one level gimmick and still likely just the same but tilted a bit" at this point. That said if you have not played Stalker, Metro 2033 (corridors again but done in a manner you might like) or possibly something like Operation Flashpoint (best if you can get a PC with good graphics capabilities here) you might wish to.

 

[Chary]

This is a pretty cool topic.

MGS: I don't see this series as one that gets too much undeserved praise. It's a solid game series.
(Then again, I might be biased because of some reasons.)
Pokemon: I've loved it my whole life, but I can see why people dislike it. Though, there's a reason Pokemon has been around and popular for so long. It's just plain addictive.
Monster Hunter: Never played it. I hardly see people talk about this game series, barring the new game that just came out.
Kingdom Hearts: Was OK, until recently. Now, honestly, I think the series has gotten greedy. Kind of like Sonic the Hedgehog, its a series that might need to be taken out back and killed.

(COD : It sucks. End of sentence.)

 

[Ethevion]

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.

 

[FAST6191]

I had not really intended those examples for a bullet point list but carry on as you will.

"MGS: People possibly don't understand what's going on in the game."

Symptom of bad writing and/or translation perhaps? Personally I never cared for the controls, many of the mechanics feel token or setpiece (granted not to many games pull that off) and that went further into making other things almost gimmicks. Indeed the writing thing I could look past in some of the spinoff games (it is not like games have ever had the best writing to be found anywhere or risen much above pulp status when it has been serviceable) so I think I will stick with controls there.

Pokemon. I believe I am on record as saying I adore medabots, robopon and demi kids (though each are not without their flaws) and as each of those is to various degrees a "pokemon clone" it seems odd that I find pokemon boring to an almost unplayable degree. For all I said about monster hunter I do also occasionally go right in for some simple streamlined mechanics (warioware, retro game challenge and G.G Series Collection being nice examples of things that work here).

 

[Gahars]

Are we just limited to these specific franchises or can we tackle others?

I'll just start with these, though. (I realized it's a mix of "Why I don't like this" and "Why don't others like this", but whatever...)

Metal Gear Solid - Metal Gear Solid is a complete and total mess. It's all over the place tonally and it relies way too much on exposition (evidently, Kojima doesn't understand the phrase "Show, don't tell"). This is Spinal Tap has a great quote, "There's such a fine line between clever and stupid," and all too often I think the MGS veers into the latter category. I still like many of the games on their own, but I think the franchise as a whole has a fair share of weaknesses and I could understand why some people be turned off by them.
Pokemon - I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Pokemon is the microwave burrito of game franchises. There's not much nutritional value there, but you know, you're not always in the mood for a steak. Sometimes you want an easy, convenient treat. They don't really change, but I guess they wouldn't be so comforting if they weren't a constant. I just prefer to get my guilty pleasures elsewhere.
Kingdom Hearts - I think KH takes the cake for most needlessly convoluted plotline in... anything, really. I also don't know how a franchise featuring Donald Duck and Goofy as main characters can take itself so damned seriously. The Final Fantasy element feels completely disjointed from the Disney stuff, and the game seems to have no idea how to connect either in any meaningful way. Add in the cringeworthy original characters and you've got "Crack Fic: The Video Game". And good God, the franchise has so many spin-offs it's spinning harder than Linda Carter's Wonder Woman.
COD single player - Bandwagons are fun.

I guess I'm the go-to "Defend Call of Duty" guy around here, so... The campaigns are short, sure, but the expectation is that players will be spending a significant amount of time in the (still great) multiplayer, and to be honest, I'd much rather have a short, well-paced campaign than a long, bloated one. 4 has a phenomenal campaign that I think people all too often forget about, and the Black Ops games have some pretty good stories. Even Modern Warfare 2 and 3 provide excellent moments and levels, albeit they are strung together with thin excuse plots. They all have their faults and failings, sure, but all too often people don't even seem to care to bring them up - Call of Duty seems to get a lot of flak simply for being the popular franchise of the day, and that's just kinda, sorta, completely dumb.

 

[emigre]

Are we just limited to these specific franchises or can we tackle others?

Fast mentioned the aforementioned IPs as examples. However because GBAtemp collectively have little to no reading comprehension, members just thought they had to comment on thise specific IPs.

 

[Rizsparky]

My specific gripe would be the Metal Gear series, I have just not been able to get into them...

 

[RodrigoDavy]

GTA: A serie of games I don't know why people like so much. Missions are boring and require mostly memorization instead of skill. The free 3D map things is cool, but even as a kid I would eventually get tired of destroying everything I can while I try to escape or fight the police, after a while it gets too repetitive. I actually played the PS1 version of the 2D GTA 2 and I found the 3D transition while beautiful graphically lost the few elements that I enjoyed in it. 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

 

[Ethevion]

Fast mentioned the aforementioned IPs as examples. However because GBAtemp collectively have little to no reading comprehension, members just thought they had to comment on thise specific IPs.

But they're the best examples

 

[Gahars]

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

Um... what?

While I disagree with the rest of your points somewhat, this last statement just made me scratch my head. Care to elaborate?

 

[Deleted member 194275]

Kid Icarus: A woman talks on you ear the every single minute until you beat the game. This is a nightmare, at least for who already has or had a wife / girlfriend (0,1% of GBTemp). When you finally get rid of the talking bitch, you got another one (ok like in real life).

Beside that, the game is 100% on rails, you just walk forward and shoot or walk forward and slash. The jokes are pretty boring and childish, the gameplay is ultra repetitive, and the online mode is just a gay version of gunz (it is not bad for being gay, but it is bad for being similar to gunz).

The game is somewhat good, I liked it for some moments, but the more you play, more it gets annoying.

 

[ilman]

League of Legends' popularity: God, this game is just blowing up in my school. Everybody is playing it. I really don't get why it's so popular. Because 99% of people in my country are pirates(don't even get me started on that), people tend to lean towards free to play games. I just hate it when 3/4 of my class are discussing the new LoL champions, skins, runes, etc. and I don't understand a thing. I don't mind LoL, but I just don't see why these MMO FtP games like LoL and Travian are played so much. The reason I dislike this game is that it's got a very steep learning curve. If I enter an Online game most people will try to flag me because of my bad playing and say that I've got to play with bots. And playing offline kinda defeats the purpose. That's the reason I like games like Osu!. They are easy to pick-up and play, yet hard to master, the community is a lot less ragey(is that a word?) and offline mode is as fun, but no one plays Osu except me, 'cuz it's too japanezy. I just don't get LoL. Never have, never will.

 

[FAST6191]

On GTA
The driving is subpar and motorbikes and flying are worse.
The shooting was bad even for the early PS2 era let alone when it eventually hit.
The hand to hand fighting, even on later games, did not do well. This is a particular issue/point I hold up a lot though and I reckon many games could stand to have a proper fighting engine.
The general movement leaves a lot to be desired as well. Especially now we have things like Assassin's Creed.
I might also agree on the missions thing. However a game that sees me burn down a drugs crop and get stoned doing it, sees me fly along after a train and assault it on a jetpack and plan, come close to doing stealth reasonably well (Mad Dog's rhyme book) and several similar things is not all bad. Also when compared to something like Just Cause 2 or L.A. Noire things look far more positive for GTA but compared to some aspects of the more recent Far Cry titles then yeah. Also GTA as singularly bad for memory tests? I agree memory tests get kind of boring but if you are playing games that eschew them I would not mind a list of them as it seems to be a common mechanic and one I can not escape all that easily.

The story
You start as a low level hood
You work your way up the ranks and get some confidence from a leader in a criminal enterprise.
You get betrayed
You start out on your own and usually make it, often with the help of a character introduced earlier and initially projected as something of a side character.
You seek vengeance for the earlier betrayal. Bitter-sweet ending may follow.

Sections might repeat for each island/city and you also have the completely off the wall stuff that occasionally happens there.

Some of this varies a bit- Lost and Damned you are vice pres and de facto leader of a motorcyle gang (functionally it is still low level hood though) and in GTA 3 the betrayal happens in the opening scenes but you still start as a low level hood. However none of it is new in the slightest to the criminal story world, about the only variation on this is for the undercover cop approach (we have had a few games attempt this as well) or the "unwilling participant"/being dragged back into the life though both San Andreas and to some extents GTA4 (what little I saw of it) do this last one well enough and for a while at least Vice city had that going on too.

However put together I hold it works reasonably well (though things have long been nipping at its heels) and will probably have to say something like "If you are just going through the story then you are doing it wrong".

Gahars already took the last sentence (we share a sentiment there). I will say though that discrimination is never glorified, openly mocked on several occasions, mocked on the in game radio stations, mocked on the fake adverts in the game and more than a few characters go through an arc here (The whole Carl learning to respect Cesar thing in San Andreas being a fine example).

At this point I should note I have not put enough time into any of the Saints Row titles, Sleeping Dogs or Prototype to say I have played them. Other than Lost and the Damned I have not really GTA 4 either.

 

[Ethevion]

I agree with ilman on League of Legends. The games learning curve is very steep, practically a 90 degree angle. If you mess up once in a game your team gets pissed and you get flamed and shit on. I don't understand why people love this game, why not play Star Craft if you think you're skilled in RTS games?

 

[ilman]

I agree with ilman on League of Legends. The games learning curve is very steep, practically a 90 degree angle. If you mess up once in a game your team gets pissed and you get flamed and shit on. I don't understand why people love this game, why not play Star Craft if you think you're skilled in RTS games?

Exactly, I love me some normal RTSes like Starcraft and Warcraft(before 'World of' came). Those were the shit, had awesome single-player campaigns, good communities and tolerable people online. Heck, you could play solo against everyone else, so no one would rage at you. I wish Blizzard made Warcraft 4 instead of WoW, which is another extremely popular game I can't get into at all.

 

[RodrigoDavy]

Um... what?

While I disagree with the rest of your points somewhat, this last statement just make me scratch my head. Care to elaborate?

Not the story itself, but in a sense that it's kind of hard to know which part of the game you are if you're not playing it frequently. Also, the 2D gta kind of gave you the instructions and background story while you were playing with your character, the 3D GTA would show a cut-scene for each mission which kind of slowdown the flow of the game.

By the discrimination, it isn't just me... It is well known some cases of it, although considering american culture I think many americans find phrases like "you drive like a crazy bitch" normal. There are more serious case, one of the games give you the option of "beating a whore to death to get your money back". You may argue that it's the player fault since he's the one controlling the character... While that's true, the game does reward you for doing it so it maybe unitentionally support this kind of attitude towards prostitutes, it's important to note while the influence of video games is sometimes greatly exaggerated, games are part of the media and , therefore, can influence people just like television does. One example I took from wikipédia is in a mission where you have to instigate a gang war between Cubans and Haitians, which in the context can be interpreted as supporting extermination of minorities. I know I sound very harsh, but I seriously doubt the game would be accepted if any of these examples involved treating americans or jews like inferior people, meaning people don't find offensive because it has nothing to do with them.

 

[Deleted_171835]

Kid Icarus: A woman talks on you ear the every single minute until you beat the game. This is a nightmare, at least for who already has or had a wife / girlfriend (0,1% of GBTemp). When you finally get rid of the talking bitch, you got another one (ok like in real life).

Beside that, the game is 100% on rails, you just walk forward and shoot or walk forward and slash. The jokes are pretty boring and childish, the gameplay is ultra repetitive, and the online mode is just a gay version of gunz (it is not bad for being gay, but it is bad for being similar to gunz).

The game is somewhat good, I liked it for some moments, but the more you play, more it gets annoying.

 

[FAST6191]

Not the story itself, but in a sense that it's kind of hard to know which part of the game you are if you're not playing it frequently. Also, the 2D gta kind of gave you the instructions and background story while you were playing with your character, the 3D GTA would show a cut-scene for each mission which kind of slowdown the flow of the game.

By the discrimination, it isn't just me... It is well known some cases of it, although considering american culture I think many americans find phrases like "you drive like a crazy bitch" normal. There are more serious case, one of the games give you the option of "beating a whore to death to get your money back". You may argue that it's the player fault since he's the one controlling the character... While that's true, the game does reward you for doing it so it maybe unitentionally support this kind of attitude towards prostitutes, it's important to note while the influence of video games is sometimes greatly exaggerated, games are part of the media and , therefore, can influence people just like television does. One example I took from wikipédia is in a mission where you have to instigate a gang war between Cubans and Haitians, which in the context can be interpreted as supporting extermination of minorities. I know I sound very harsh, but I seriously doubt the game would be accepted if any of these examples involved treating americans or jews like inferior people, meaning people don't find offensive because it has nothing to do with them.

GTA4 did quite a bit on random phonecalls, email and side missions or did you mean general game flow was broken up by cutscenes?

Beating prostitutes is much like beating regular members of the public in GTA in that you do not want to do it in front of the police lest you get a wanted level and thus it is not completely positive.

I do recall and narrowly avoided mentioning the "kill all the Haitians" bit as it seemed something of a non issue. However gangs forming along ethnic/religious lines is a fairly well documented thing, especially in every place the GTA games have thus far been set, and for the types of characters you tend to play and people you tend to work for having a gang war start to pull focus from your own dealings is a fairly well documented and fairly effective tactic. Perhaps you are right that things might be treated differently if pet "ooh you can not say that"/hot button topics like Americans* or people of Jewish ancestry if you are also American (it means surprisingly little in the UK) were mentioned and though in many ways that is sad I am not all that sure it is relevant. To that end so I will have to accuse your "could be seen" of reaching a bit, especially as you seem to go after gangs and not ethnic groups for either the sake of it or "reasons". Now it might still be a callous disregard for life or even some variation of vigilantism but not ethnic prejudice or discrimination.

*the amount of American PMC types I have killed in various games might change things here. That said PMC seems to be synonymous with "rogue element" when it needs to be as far as modern games are concerned. Of course the ways Americans tend to treat their military are also a bit different to a lot of other places so I might have to make a whole other topic there.

Games can influence people.... sure but are you not in danger of heading towards the "murder simulators" nonsense that occupied many until quite recently?