Hot takes

[Tonberry]

big post

Nice! I think I have a better understanding on where you're coming from now, thanks again for the interesting discussion.

As a tiny aside, I really like it when indie devs are outspoken about piracy. Edmund McMillen (Meat Boy, Isaac) and Arsi Patala (Ultrakill) both talked about how people are free to pirate their stuff because they wouldn't have been where they are now if they didn't have easy access to stuff, among other reasons. I think that's a good message if you're a creator (which I personally don't consider virtue signaling or whatever, because what would the ulterior motive be if they're telling people to not pay for their product if they don't can/want to). The Darkwood devs put their own game on PirateBay and updated it, and the guy who made Moonring outright refuses fans who want to pay for the game.
If my crummy game I'm working on would ever grant me some sort of platform I would like to spread that message too. Not at all to stroke my ego (because I'd rather not have a platform in the first place), but because I truly believe in it.

 

[mel]

I never understood the hype that NES gets from YouTubers. It has the worst library out of any console. Zelda, Mega Man, and Mario are ok. The rest of the games are shovelware.

List of mediocre games:
Uncharted
Assassins Creed
Silent Hill 2
Golden Eye 007
Tomb Raider

Have you played the nes metal gear games? I think those are quite good, although I could be blinded by the context the metal gear solid games have given them...

Castlevania is fun as well.

I won't disagree with most of the library being shovelware though.

 

[miguk]

Some of my takes:

• Some game genres do not earn the term "game". Visual novels are just illustrated ebooks. Sim games often have no win condition, and are thus just simulations. The "cinematic adventures" that plague the PS consoles are just tedious versions of FMV "games", which are just tedious movies.
• The adventure genre that some people lament the death of died because its offspring, survival horror, turned out so much funner that it revealed the flaws of the original genre. Adventure games failed to adapt to what they should have learned from that.
• Final Fantasy has interesting female characters, but none of them are wifus. They are written well enough to be likeable and relatable, but not lovable. That includes Tifa, who is basically a presonality-free Kaho Shibuya wannabe.
• Games will not be considered high art so long as the top selling games are non-art (FIFA) and the lowest form of art (Call of Duty). If gamers have complaints about this, they have no one to blame but their own unwillingness to support actual high art in games. Even film fans have enough respect for the genre's integrity to go watch an arthouse film after they're done watching popcorn junk.
• The Last of Us (game or tv series) is garbage to me, not based on the gameplay, graphics, or any other typical game failure. It's garbage because they claim to set it in real geography while failing to get the layout correct. If you've never been to a real location used in games before, you don't know how jarring it is to see an actual uncanny valley of a place you know well. It's like having some JoJo villian erase parts of the world and connect others while you're walking through it. Devs, either commit to a real world map or don't claim that you used a real world location in-game.
• Hand-drawn HD 2D is inherently better than pixel 2D. Examples of it being bad are a result of bad and/or rushed design, not because drawings are bad. Those pixels you like were originally handmade drawings before they were turned into low-res blocks. Nobody ever claims the pixel box art from early NES games were the best box art ever.
• Copyright laws need to be reformed and put back to 28 years maximum. If you can't make enough money off an idea in nearly 3 decades to match its value, your idea and/or its marketing suck. And for games, that included both the binaries and the source code. I don't care if a bunch of lazy corporations lose a little revenue from games they don't even care to preserve. They're not even going to lose anything other than the minuscule extra money they make from lazily-done rereleases and "remasters". Preserving culture is more important than inching along investor portfolios.
• Piggybacking on an earlier comment, nothing in the flash genre, even at its best, has half the value of even an early 80s game. I'd rather play Pac-man or Donkey Kong than Angry Birds, Canabalt, or even Alien Hominid.
• I actually think we need more "rip-offs" of old games. And the indie scene particularly isn't doing it enough because they aren't "ripping-off" enough obscure old games. I'm sick of half of every indie game being ① basically Earthbound, ② Zelda/Pokemon on GBC, or ③ [POPULAR GAME], but bullet hell. There are a ton of old games that deserve to be "ripped-off" because we aren't getting more of them anymore and the companies don't make an effort to put them on new computers/consoles.

 

[Tonberry]

This isn't a slight on the comment above me (I thought those were some pretty cold takes for the mostpart) but I had planned on posting some more positive "hot takes" (atleast from my PoV), since so many of them (definitely not all) seem to be negative, and I don't think that's quite as interesting usually, but I didn't have time to post it because I got stuck playing Master Duel.

1. Open World games are fine. A big reason people claim games like Breath of the Wild and FF7 Rebirth are "open world games done right" are because they had to wait until franchises they liked got the treatment before they realized it, because they (especially Rebirth) really don't do a lot of new things with the gameplay style.
2. People complaining that MMOs aren't "social enough" anymore are often inflicting this upon themselves. You constantly see people claiming it's impossible to be social in MMOs, but they're oftentimes simply not trying hard enough, or are afraid of making first contact. I've never ever had an issue where any MMO I've played felt "too barren", and I'm almost always a solo player at that. Don't worry so much and say hello during a dungeon sometimes!
3. Pixel graphics are completely timeless to me. Doesn't matter if it's E.T, Zelda 1, Symphony of the Night or Sea of Stars, no matter the generation pixel graphics will always look good in their own context, not taking into account individual styles and more focusing on the graphical style in and of itself.
4. Dragon Quest localizations are the best video game localizations ever made, and I think they elevate the experience by at least 1000%.
5. Speaking of localizations, caring about english or american accents in dubbed games feels redundant, and much of it in my experience stems from some kind of anglo/american either hating their own accents, or hating the ones across the pond. Both are fine if done well.
6. "Shitty American box art" has its charm and its rightful place in the world. It's almost never as good as their Japanese counterparts but they're also almost always really funny.

Phew, that felt good.
Hm? Oh, alright, I'll end it with an inflammatory one, don't wanna step too out of line.
Dark Souls 3 is a complete crock of shit. An utterly soulless, completely meaningless and derivative example of a video game. Every single misstep was taken during the conception of that husk.

 

[SwordBreaker39]

1.Final fantasy 7 is a decent RPG but far from the best honestly it makes maybe top 8 for me.

2.Dark souls 2 is honestly damn good honestly the best of all 3.

3.Bloodborn is the black sheep of souls games to damn easy to be called souls like and the setting so damn boring.

4.Sekiro bored the hell out of me.

5. Last of us 1 and 2 are both so damn boring zmobie tropes but instead of "zombie zombies" we get mushroom infected people. But honestly the story was lack luster and game play became repetitive fast. And I don´t mind repetitive game play if the story is good or the repetitive game play is some what fun.

6. Neir automata such an overrated game that got no clue on what type of game it wanna be and I think the biggest reason people love it so much is how much people love to goon over 2B thanks to Rule 34.

 

[miguk]

This isn't a slight on the comment above me (I thought those were some pretty cold takes for the mostpart) but I had planned on posting some more positive "hot takes"

There was some negativity there, but not all of it was. I stood up for HD 2D, which gets a lot of flack in the retro gaming community. (For the record, I like pixel art too, but I wish there wasn't so much backlash against letting it evolve to its logical conclusion.) And I also stood up for indie devs against the negativity they are getting in this thread (albeit with my own complaint tucked in). That aside, some of my "negative" comments were tongue-in-cheek without an obvious wink-nudge to point it out.

 

[Tonberry]

There was some negativity there, but not all of it was. I stood up for HD 2D, which gets a lot of flack in the retro gaming community. (For the record, I like pixel art too, but I wish there wasn't so much backlash against letting it evolve to its logical conclusion.) And I also stood up for indie devs against the negativity they are getting in this thread (albeit with my own complaint tucked in). That aside, some of my "negative" comments were tongue-in-cheek without an obvious wink-nudge to point it out.

Yeah of course, sorry, I just meant that I was in the process of making my own post but I didn't want to appear as if I was outright ignoring your post just to drop my own wall of text, sorry for any confusion!

 

[Somnia]

I don't think I've contributed to this thread with a take of my own because I struggle to think of a take that feels hot, given that in the current internet age it feels like you can always find spaces where people will agree with any opinion no matter how controversial. Maybe I've got something on Gorse's level hiding in the deep corners of my mind, but it seems I'm far too agreeable and content to have anything spicy goin on. Since I've replied to others a fair few times (and am doing that yet again in this post) I'll try and rapid fire a few lukewarm takes since it is all I can seem to muster:

- Halo Reach is the worst overall game in the franchise
- The PS3 is Sony's best home console
- The WiiU is a top 3 Nintendo system of all time
- The Last of Us 1 actually is fantastic (this is easily the weakest one but it is so commonly called bad or mediocre online that this feels at least room-temperature)
- Concord's art style was pretty dope, actually
- The 7th generation's insistence on shoving multiplayer into tons of single-player focused games was badass and resulted in inventive and enjoyable takes on multiplayer conventions. Even the more generic MP modes were enjoyable enough to justify keeping in, especially when you remember how jank and last-minute many 5th and 6th generation multiplayer modes were. The only things that changed were the standards of the day and the unfortunate reality that games had gotten too expensive and time-consuming to make to justify spending resources on these kinds of modes anymore.
- Drawn to Death was the best PS4 game (as in exclusive) and it isn't even close. RIP to one of the greatest shooters of all time.

I agree 100%, and in as clear a manner as possible: I consider myself a consumer of video games, because video games are products. I have precisely zero emotional connection with video games (beyond having fun with many of them, of course), and I especially have zero empathy for indie developers (or non-indie developers) of any sort, for any reason. I truly do not care if you put out a game that you've been wanting to make your whole life – if I have to pay money for it, I'm going to judge it as rigorously as possible, as I do with everything I buy. It's not an "art project" to me – it's a piece of consumer software to be bought and sold.

I'm certain I'm in the minority in that viewpoint, but it absolutely is what I think, and I can't really relate to anyone who thinks otherwise. (I'm not saying you're wrong or stupid for doing so – just that I simply cannot agree.) Even if I did, I would never give a modicum of sympathy to indie developers who post things like this (Undertale), this (Fez), and/or this (Minecraft). Why would I? If they can't even be decent, humble individuals in a public arena, why would I ever give them the benefit of the doubt?

Just wanna reply to this bit to call it utterly insane on principle and to specifically compare a tweet from Toby joking about hipster's "liking things before they were cool" to Phil Fish telling people to kill themselves or Notch being an outright conspiracy nutso bigot is just... Truly bizarre to me. Especially when your example of why you dislike Notch is not any of the actual shitty or controversial things he has said but just that when engaging with someone being rude to him, he just puffed his chest a bit. Especially especially when your comments on the whole are more egotistical in tone and content than that tweet. But I guess since you're a consumer you're allowed to be vitriolic or whatever? To specifically go on to say "can't be decent" as if Toby saying "I'm proud of the thing I made and its blowing up and that's cool" somehow robs him of any level of decency.

Truly, truly just a bizarre sentiment to me. I'm not trying to say anything about you broadly because this isn't that serious of a topic and it would take some leaps for me to actually paint you with a broad brush but the sentiment is just odd. Both Notch and the Jonathon Blow comparison come up and almost feel like this old Community clip in a way and just a generally weird energy to have towards creatives.

(I tried to have that appear as a url linked behind text but the site seems to automatically insert the MEDIA bb code to make it appear as a thumbnail to click? Odd, need to learn bb code lol)

And for the record I'm not saying you have to hate anyone or not enjoy what they make because of who they are. I'm a big fan of separating art from artists and I enjoy plenty of content from people who are deemed problematic or just say/believe things I agree with. Ethical consumption isn't really a can of worms I'm trying to open up here, I'm just saying that where you have drawn the line feels weird. Not gonna delve into it any further because it'd probably become outright toxic at that point. Everytime you talk about this I disagree with you on a more fundamental level and that's definitely funny since I originally replied to try and find common ground lol. Clearly we aren't gonna see eye to eye on this on any level and obv that's fine.

 

[Bakuma1997]

 

[Gorse]

Maybe I've got something on Gorse's level hiding in the deep corners of my mind,

Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

Just wanna reply to this bit to call it utterly insane on principle and to specifically compare a tweet from Toby joking about hipster's "liking things before they were cool" to Phil Fish telling people to kill themselves or Notch being an outright conspiracy nutso bigot is just... Truly bizarre to me.

Yeah yeah yeah, you can justify it all you want – regardless of content, they're all just snide, passive-aggressive, ultimately-impotent posturing to me, meant entirely to bolster the dev's already-inflated ego even further. (Even Notch's political stuff, which I specifically didn't link so as not to muddle my point.) I'm sure you could find several examples of even more smug nonsense from all three of those developers and many more, I just chose the first three that came to mind.

But I guess since you're a consumer you're allowed to be vitriolic or whatever?

Yep! I'm the one with the money, remember. If any of these dopes are allowed to be vitriolic on the internet, I – their potential customer – sure as heck am. Again, zero empathy for any of them – sorry.

Ethical consumption

Somnia, with all due respect, get over yourself. None of these people are your friends, they're random internet nerds who got famous due mostly to circumstance and the herd-like mentality of their audience, and now use that popularity to massage their own ego endlessly in public forums. Any one of them, Toby included, would toss you under a bus if it meant they'd gain an extra 10 followers. (In particular, Toby Fox's constant self-aggrandizing is one of the biggest reasons why I find him so intolerable.)

Why anyone would ever defend even the most innocuous one is beyond me to the extreme. This is what I'm talking about when I say that I don't have any "emotional connection" to these people or their work – they're entirely insufferable, and not worth even a slight bit of my regard. Why would they be? I certainly don't like their games (except Minecraft, that one's great).

Call it "weird" or "bizarre" or whatever dismissive, thought-terminating cliche you want – it's true. If these people were genuinely humble, respectful, decent individuals, we wouldn't be having this discussion. (I can think of many people in the industry who fit that description, and whom I like in general: Shiggy, Al Lowe, Warren Spector, Roberta Williams, even more acerbic individuals like Kenji Eno, etc. Of course, none of them are millennial indie developers with Twitter accounts.) I don't mean to come off as rude, but if you can't understand where I'm coming from even with clear examples, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

[RageBurner]

This thread grew into a hydra with so many heads I can't possibly feed them all anymore LOL

 

[Somnia]

Somnia, with all due respect, get over yourself. None of these people are your friends, they're random internet nerds who got famous due mostly to circumstance and the herd-like mentality of their audience, and now use that popularity to massage their own ego endlessly in public forums. Any one of them, Toby included, would toss you under a bus if it meant they'd gain an extra 10 followers. (In particular, Toby Fox's constant self-aggrandizing is one of the biggest reasons why I find him so intolerable.)

Why anyone would ever defend even the most innocuous one is beyond me to the extreme. This is what I'm talking about when I say that I don't have any "emotional connection" to these people or their work – they're entirely insufferable, and not worth even a slight bit of my regard. Why would they be? I certainly don't like their games (except Minecraft, that one's great).

Call it "weird" or "bizarre" or whatever dismissive, thought-terminating cliche you want – it's true. If these people were genuinely humble, respectful, decent individuals, we wouldn't be having this discussion. (I can think of many people in the industry who fit that description, and whom I like in general: Shiggy, Al Lowe, Warren Spector, Roberta Williams, even more acerbic individuals like Kenji Eno, etc. Of course, none of them are millennial indie developers with Twitter accounts.) I don't mean to come off as rude, but if you can't understand where I'm coming from even with clear examples, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I typed up a much longer response to this but decided against it. I think almost every word you have spilled in this thread is annoying to put it nicely and we've established there's no common ground for us. The amount of ego you allow yourself to have whilst demanding performative humbleness when addressing the public for anyone is silly. Creatives and consumers alike are not above or below each other. I treat the dude bragging about beating a hard game or winning a tournament the same way I treat someone who is proud of something they made. I'm happy that they're happy and I have no idea why anyone would try to make it deeper than that. So long as they're not propping themselves up to directly tear someone else down I'm chillin. The sin of choosing to release a work to the public doesn't suddenly change the standard I hold you to as a person and nothing that anyone has said has ever been able to convince me that it makes sense to do so. If I dislike the way someone acts as a creative I would also dislike it if they were purely a consumer and vice versa.

The response to my quote about how I'm /not/ trying to make this a discussion about ethical consumption and how /I don't really care/ about how these people are in public feels bad faith at best. I don't follow these people and even if I did, the things they post on twitter are usually only part of who they are as people and can only allow for so much detail/nuance in the first place. Idk why you'd imply that I view these people as paragons or that I even care if they are paragons to begin with when quoting a section where I explicitly state that I don't care. Maybe you think I'm lying or that I think it's ontologically correct to not care and that I'm insulting you for personally caring? I Pinky promise that isn't the case.

That is all. I nibbled on the hook, but I promised I wouldn't fully bite it. We've exhausted this topic, and I don't think we can go any further because we disagree on so much that this could only really devolve into meaningless personal attacks if we went any deeper with it. When I asked, "how could you paint an entire sector of the industry with such a broad brush and dislike it so much" I wasn't expecting part of the answer to be "Toby Fox is proud of Undertale" but here we are.

Love you pookie

 

[Gorse]

@Somnia I agree, because my mind hasn't been changed either, and I think you and I have fundamentally opposing viewpoints on the matter that can't be solved through discussion alone. My last word on this topic, though:

performative humbleness

It's called "professionalism", and it's something you should have a pretty solid grip on if you're an adult selling a product. THAT'S ALL

 

[ciro64]

Even Cave Story, the ur-example of this sort of indie game – could you tell me about the game without, in good faith, referencing Metroid?

• Cave Story is a game about a robot boy who lost his memories and must find his way to get know the exotic world around him.
• Quote is a mute protagonist. The story is told by exploring the world, hearing the dialogue from other characters and watching occasional cutscenes. Over time, you grow attached to some of these characters and what they stand for, while also feeling motivated to defeat the villains.
• Many weapons and power-ups are optional and most of them aren't mandatory to progress.
• Weapons have a level system to them: they level up by collecting triangles that comes from enemies that act as experience points, and you level down by losing those points when you get hit. Only one weapon requires ammo that doesn't regenerate.
• Progression is mostly achieved by completing a quest inside areas. Some of them are more linear than others. These quests often requires talking to characters and taking items to them. The order you tackle these areas are linear.
  There is some back tracking (including some open and optional backtracking) in the late game.

If I were to bring Metroid instead, all of those points would say different things. Which is why metroidvania purists don't consider Cave Story to be one.

But I get why you would feel they look alike too much, because the similarities are there, if even some are just on a superficial level. Based on a few posts I've read from you, you seem to be the type of person who cares for the novelty factor in games first and foremost. And that's a fine taste to have. And I do agree it's important that we have games that aims for this.

Usually, I'm on the other side of the spectrum. For example, I don't play Ex-Zodiac because it's not close enough to Star Fox.
I look for the little differences and similarities between games of the same genre. Hell, pick me two Super Mario World romhacks and I'd see them as separate games.

It's okay to feel one way or another. What gets to me is when people draw some arbitrary line and want to impose it on others, like treating every new AAA open-world or narrative driven game as the next big thing, but when it comes to mascot platformers they think all of them are the same.

 

[RageBurner]

It's okay to feel one way or another. What gets to me is when people draw some arbitrary line and want to impose it on anothers, like treating every AAA open-world or narrative driven game is the next big thing, but when it comes to mascot platformers they think all of them are the same.

This here is the sweet nectar that is the summation of truth. Our lines are ours; we love our lines, but others' lines might be squigglier or straighter than our own. Someone else's lines might even be curves!

 

[Gorse]

If I were to bring Metroid instead, all of those points would say different things.

...Would they? Aside from the collecting triangles as power-ups thing and the very superficial differences between Quote and Samus as characters (and, frankly, Samus is essentially a mute robot herself when she's in the suit), couldn't you make every one of those points for Metroid, too? You tell me, because I hate the Metroidvania genre.

 

[RageBurner]

I know you are addressing @ciro64 and not me, so I apologize for butting in in advance, but there is more to those two than surface level differences. You need to consider parametrical differences, too, or, in other words, how the game feels, as what it looks like on the tin doesn't tell the whole story.

They couldn't feel more different to play: movement is different, gravity is different, acceleration, friction... it leads to a very different experience and the overall structure is very different, even though they might share some vague key points.

Stuffing them together at face value would be like saying Forza Motorsport and Burnout are the same because they happen to involve wheeled vehicles and asphalt tracks, and again, that couldn't be more wrong.

Then again, you said you don't like the genre, and it's not like I'm trying to convert you like those Age of Empires monks could... remember those? 2 or 3 casts and the unit changed sides! nah, I'm not like that, but there you go. You don't have to agree, but I've laid honest facts for you.

 

[Somnia]

It's called "professionalism", and it's something you should have a pretty solid grip on if you're an adult selling a product. THAT'S ALL

Fair enough but imo it is an overrated concept. The way we view it tends to be kinda arbitrary and so many examples of what we view as respectful or professional are purely aesthetic and say little about your overall character (dress codes are a frequent example of this). Regardless I just fail to see why any standard someone does apply shouldn't go both ways. If something supposedly speaks poorly to your character when done as someone with an audience, it reads the same if they don't have one.

 

[RuckusMcGuckus]

Elden ring would be better with less open world and zero horseback.

 

[RageBurner]

Elden ring would be better with less open world and zero horseback.

Maybe one exists because of the other. Nice avatar, love Samurai Jack!

 

[ciro64]

I know you are addressing @ciro64 and not me, so I apologize for butting in in advance, but there is more to those two than surface level differences. You need to consider parametrical differences, too, or, in other words, how the game feels, as what it looks like on the tin doesn't tell the whole story.

They couldn't feel more different to play: movement is different, gravity is different, acceleration, friction... it leads to a very different experience and the overall structure is very different, even though they might share some vague key points.

Stuffing them together at face value would be like saying Forza Motorsport and Burnout are the same because they happen to involve wheeled vehicles and asphalt tracks, and again, that couldn't be more wrong.

Then again, you said you don't like the genre, and it's not like I'm trying to convert you like those Age of Empires monks could... remember those? 2 or 3 casts and the unit changed sides! nah, I'm not like that, but there you go. You don't have to agree, but I've laid honest facts for you.

You made good points.

I'll add this:

Traditional Metroid's progression is by done by fucking around in a non-linear map. Weapon upgrades are often mandatory. There is an intended progression order, but the map presents itself in a way that feels like you're the one discovering things. As you unlock new abilities, you get to fuck around with the map in new ways, widening up your exploration boundaries and getting access to new collectibles and secrets. Sometimes the intended progression can be broken by clever maneuver of your abilities, called sequence break. Sometimes the developers knows about it, other times not.

You also don't talk to NPCs and do quests. The game "story" is about the sense of wonder of your own exploration.

I mentioned "traditional" at the beginning because there are a few variations to this, some games features more Samus' inner monologue, others you can scan things, read logs, talk to a single NPC on save points, some features longer and more frequent cutscenes. And to be fair, I've only beaten Zero Mission.

I'm getting a little sleepy in case I haven't laid down things clearly

 

[RageBurner]

I mentioned "traditional" at the beginning because there are a few variations to this, some games features more Samus' inner monologue, others you can scan things, read logs, talk to a single NPC on save points, some features longer and more frequent cutscenes. And to be fair, I've only beaten Zero Mission.

Besides ZM I've beaten AM2R, SM and Fusion (neither fast nor efficiently, but I did) and yeah, everything you say is correct. Sequence break is a big thing in most of these, while I do believe you cannot sequence break Cave Story, it's a big difference in potential emergent play.

 

[ciro64]

Besides ZM I've beaten AM2R, SM and Fusion (neither fast nor efficiently, but I did) and yeah, everything you say is correct. Sequence break is a big thing in most of these, while I do believe you cannot sequence break Cave Story, it's a big difference in potential emergent play.

In Cave Story there is one instance where you can use your jetpack combined with the machine gun to bypass the elevator quest, but upon arriving at the top the developer basically tells you to go fuck yourself and go back. Not with these exact words of course xD

 

[Tonberry]

SPEAKING OF METROID LOLOL

I think Fusion is the weakest entry by a pretty wide margin (at least of the 2D games)

 

[Jeanfranc]

There hasn't been a good Legend of Zelda game in 20 years

You mean 39 years

Post automatically merged: Jan 15, 2025

This thread grew into a hydra with so many heads I can't possibly feed them all anymore LOL

A shame I didn't find this thread earlier, this is entertaining.
I don't really get all these walls of text by these guys: honestly, I don't care about who's copying who or the dev's moral compass and such, I care if the game's good, which is actually quite rare both for indies and AAA.