Hot takes

[PrismRed]

And for the love of all that is good and holy, please refrain from posting anything political. We already know your opinion on it, I promise you.

I'LL START!!

Being overly critical about politics is a sign that you are a boring person who got nothing better to do in life.

 

[Tonberry]

Contemporary fantasy fiction (mostly in literature) is too obsessed with worldbuilding and lore, and an author that focuses too much on it muddles their stories by not letting the world unravel organically for the reader. This is a trend currently in fantasy, because fans love dissecting the nitty-gritty, which is fine, but when it’s too much of it and too little story, the story itself takes second place and that’s just not fun.

Sword-and-Sorcery is a better fantasy genre overall because it’s (mostly) about moment-to-moment adventure, which makes for a much funner and more exciting read in general, and I wish that kind of pulpy, sincere storytelling would make a comeback. I implore anyone who is sick of high fantasy to read Conan. It really is as good as they say.

 

[medisinn]

I absolutely despise Youtube Shorts and their forced entry into my world. I don't like them, I don't want to see them, I don't want them to come up every two or three results when I search for something, I don't want them to keep spoiling shit from wrestling or sports or other Youtube videos I haven't been able to watch yet, I just want them out of my life. It's slowly becoming more and more invasive on the mobile app against my consent and the laws of decency. I get why they are there, because TikTok makes a dumbtruck load of money and it's the trend to copy for every other social media site, and I'm sure it's helped a lot of creators make some cash, I just don't care. Get it out of my faaaaccccee.

 

[Lena CE]

Being overly critical about politics is a sign that you are a boring person who got nothing better to do in life.

Statements made by the boring and deranged ;)

I absolutely despise Youtube Shorts and their forced entry into my world. I don't like them, I don't want to see them, I don't want them to come up every two or three results when I search for something, I don't want them to keep spoiling shit from wrestling or sports or other Youtube videos I haven't been able to watch yet, I just want them out of my life. It's slowly becoming more and more invasive on the mobile app against my consent and the laws of decency. I get why they are there, because TikTok makes a dumbtruck load of money and it's the trend to copy for every other social media site, and I'm sure it's helped a lot of creators make some cash, I just don't care. Get it out of my faaaaccccee.

It is truly a crime you can't just remove from the UI entirely. Hell it's sad that generally speaking this is a hot take. If only we could have known just what hell Vine had unleashed upon the world I would have hated it more than I already did when it was relevant.

 

[MasterEn]

I enjoyed the Twilight books. The movies are pretty bad, though.
Stephenie Meyer's prose isn't quite there and some other things are also severely lacking, but whenever I read the books I get transported into this little town, hidden between trees, and I just get nostalgic. I relate to Bella to a great extent, considering I also grew up in a small town, divorce, dad stayed, I left with my mom and then her new bf, never had any friends, etc., etc.. I know that this isn't really unique, but it does speak to me.

And I'm a sucker for unconditional love stories. Sue me. TEAM EDWARD!!!

team edward sucks. team alucard is vastly superior.
bitches love canons.

 

[Lena CE]

Contemporary fantasy fiction (mostly in literature) is too obsessed with worldbuilding and lore, and an author that focuses too much on it muddles their stories by not letting the world unravel organically for the reader. This is a trend currently in fantasy, because fans love dissecting the nitty-gritty, which is fine, but when it’s too much of it and too little story, the story itself takes second place and that’s just not fun.

Sword-and-Sorcery is a better fantasy genre overall because it’s (mostly) about moment-to-moment adventure, which makes for a much funner and more exciting read in general, and I wish that kind of pulpy, sincere storytelling would make a comeback. I implore anyone who is sick of high fantasy to read Conan. It really is as good as they say.

I've talked about this with my friends a lot in the past but I love the way you phrase it. Usually when I think about it, it comes up in the context of western RPGs vs JRPGs. Western RPGs tend to focus heavily on spelling out every facet of the lore in excruciating detail. Everything tries to be grounded and logical and it almost feels like a weird response to pedants on social media or Youtube that try to "plothole ding" everything. JRPGs on the other hand usually tend to leave large chunks of the world and its mechanics unexplored, allowing people to fill in the blanks and speculate alone or with others. I kind of love that because it allows your worlds to be more fantastical and in general, I'm a bit of a sucker for fanfic/fan theory discussion.

I doubt that my internal framing of "west vs Japan" is fair because examples of both light and "heavy" worldbuilding exist in both regions, but it's just what I've anecdotally noticed. I'm sure there is some interesting stuff to dig into on a cultural history level to explain why such a distinction exists, if it does. There are pros and cons to both ways of doing things though and some of my favorite stories come from both styles of storytelling. Sometimes it is nice to just let the audience's mind fill in the blanks and suspend their disbelief a bit while the writers focus on fleshing out other aspects of the work.

 

[Tonberry]

I've talked about this with my friends a lot in the past but I love the way you phrase it. Usually when I think about it, it comes up in the context of western RPGs vs JRPGs. Western RPGs tend to focus heavily on spelling out every facet of the lore in excruciating detail. Everything tries to be grounded and logical and it almost feels like a weird response to pedants on social media or Youtube that try to "plothole ding" everything. JRPGs on the other hand usually tend to leave large chunks of the world and its mechanics unexplored, allowing people to fill in the blanks and speculate alone or with others. I kind of love that because it allows your worlds to be more fantastical and in general, I'm a bit of a sucker for fanfic/fan theory discussion.

I doubt that my internal framing of "west vs Japan" is fair because examples of both styles of light and "heavy" worldbuilding exist in both regions, but it's just what I've anecdotally noticed. I'm sure there is some interesting stuff to dig into on a cultural history level to explain why such a distinction exists, if it does. There are pros and cons to both ways of doing things though and some of my favorite stories come from both styles of storytelling. Sometimes it is nice to just let the audience's mind fill in the blanks and suspend their disbelief a bit while the writers focus on fleshing out other aspects of the work.

This is also extra interesting because I kind of come from the angle of someone who doesn’t care very much for fan theories.

Not that I’m against it or anything like that, I just personally like looking at stories ”as is” and don’t tend to worry too much about the details if they’re not there (aside from some exceptions of course) because too much fan speculating can prove to be quite exhausting, but in a different way than the ”official super dense worldbuilding” :)

 

[Clippy]

team edward sucks. team alucard is vastly superior.
bitches love canons.

 

[hazys]

Heroes puts its best foot forward with a very nice first stage, and the concept of three-person teams is cool, but it quickly falls apart from there. I will admit that it has a nice vibrant look reminiscent of the best of 3D Sonic. But I don't think it's good.

 

[Toppis Toppis]

I think Sonic Heroes is still a good game, even with its issues

 

[MemeAlert]

That's undeniably a hot take if I ever saw one. I have many grievances with Heroes but the main one stems from the level design which often borders on abysmal, particularly Egg Fleet, Frog Forest and others come to mind as just plain unfun. Which is a shame because the concept and the general presentation are all rather solid.

Define abysmal?

Post automatically merged: Jan 25, 2025

heroes on gamecube is one of the very first games i have conscious memory of playing, and even i don't revisit it very often because the jank is ROUGH. has a lot going for it aesthetically but it feels even more inconsistent than SA2 (a game that i love and have basically mastered, but admittedly feels pretty clunky until you've played it for 50 hours and have the mechanics completely memorized)

Eh I got used to the jank of Sonic Heroes, to be honest I don't even remember any jank from Sonic Adventure 2.

Post automatically merged: Jan 25, 2025

ALSO one of the very first games i remember playing. i revisited it with reloaded in the past couple of months and honestly it wasn't nearly as rough. the problems with that game are mostly in the level and mission design, but a lot of the time it didn't push too hard against me in this recent playthrough. i absolutely love the westopolis music.

Are you talking about the Shadow the Hedgehog Reloaded mod? How is it? I didn't bother trying it because you have to download a modded version of Nintendont.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I liked the more light-hearted story and ambience of this game because I felt that SA2 was a bit dangerously too serious (thankfully not crossing the line like Shadow and 2006. SA1 was fine in most of t he story because it kept some of that 90's feel) and the returns of classic elements like the Special Stages for the Chaos Emeralds and the Chaotix getting reintroduced as characters in the franchise (keep in mind that aside from the classic Sonic/Tails/Knuckles/Amy team of 4 there were basically no pre-Adventure mobians getting introduced in the franchise so rip Team Hooligans with Fang, Bean and Bark as well as Mighty and Ray which were also mentioned in Generations before Mania Plus got them back).


However: I just didn't like how it forces you to redo the game four times just to be able to tackle the Final Story was just tedious (even SA1 with Big and Tails' first half and SA2 having you to go through the Treasure Hunting and Mech Shooting levels still basically only made you redo the story twice at best) and the slipperiness is what prevented me from replaying it.

I wish it got remade with only two teams getting required and a better physics.

 

[Bakuma1997]

*Prepares a Armor vest and some weapons* Here i go...

The OG XBOX controller, the infamous Duke, is far less intuitive to use than some people remembvers, i like the Joystick and the D.pad, while less confy than Switch or Xbox X it is still confortable, alas my main gripes are the size (People with big hands will still find it fine) and the whole Six face buttons scheme tries to replicate the L/R 1/2 mapping from the DualShocks or the then recent Gamecube Controller, i troed playing like if it was Saturn's pad bit the black and white buttons at times feels like they tried to be L/R 1's, the fact that the Select and Start buttons are at the buttons brings one of the few gripes i have against the Dreamcast controller, since from the NES we are used to having them between the D-pad and the face buttons (Unless you had the brick Gameboys) understandable in handhelds, clumsy and confusing in Consoles

Not even the New model is safe, rather than making the Black and White buttons shoulder buttons they added them BELOW the buttons, the Pause and Select also ended BELOW the D-pad, making the space where they could fit better fell lonely and nude, i had an XBOX for a week, and in that time i wanted to be able to connect my XBOX ONE joystick before deciding my Sis, who lives far from us since she married, could have some after job fun and gave it to her

XBOX OG may have classic games, but playing it with the joystick is cumbersome, the best way is to hack the console to get peripherials or on PC via amulation

 

[akumajobelmont]

Here we go...

Not doing this to stoke any fires, but I honestly think that Burnout is the most overrated Arcade Racing series in history. The only good thing about them was the focus on 60fps, but I never, ever liked the visuals, HATED the music and couldn't stand the style of gameplay. I don't get the crashes, why would you want to constantly slow yourself down in an arcade racer? I guess the appeal of it was that it wasn't technically demanding when it came to racing technique from the player, and it was flash and style over substance but that's what makes it incredibly boring to me.

To make matters worse for those of you who live and die by Burnout 3/Revenge, the only Burnout I can tolerate and sometimes occasionally Burnout Paradise. But I mute the awful music. It's too bad you can't mute the Paradise City track at the start of the game.

Again, this is all true, and I figured this'd be the best place to vent about it :P

 

[ShibbyDealer]

Mario's pretty lame outside of the spin-offs and maybe the 3D games most of the time. I don't get how anybody would really consider the "New" line of games as anything better than "OK."

 

[Toppis Toppis]

I liked the more light-hearted story and ambience of this game because I felt that SA2 was a bit dangerously too serious (thankfully not crossing the line like Shadow and 2006. SA1 was fine in most of t he story because it kept some of that 90's feel) and the returns of classic elements like the Special Stages for the Chaos Emeralds and the Chaotix getting reintroduced as characters in the franchise (keep in mind that aside from the classic Sonic/Tails/Knuckles/Amy team of 4 there were basically no pre-Adventure mobians getting introduced in the franchise so rip Team Hooligans with Fang, Bean and Bark as well as Mighty and Ray which were also mentioned in Generations before Mania Plus got them back).


However: I just didn't like how it forces you to redo the game four times just to be able to tackle the Final Story was just tedious (even SA1 with Big and Tails' first half and SA2 having you to go through the Treasure Hunting and Mech Shooting levels still basically only made you redo the story twice at best) and the slipperiness is what prevented me from replaying it.

I wish it got remade with only two teams getting required and a better physics.

maybe remaster is better

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Maybe remaster is better.

If it's Sonic x Shadow Generation-like I'd say why not.

But I wish the swapping mechanic was done better, maybe L1 and R1 or even having one button for a character so you'd basically swap fast.

Also I dislike that a character is bound to a formation so you're forced to be slow as hell as Fly.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Mario's pretty lame outside of the spin-offs and maybe the 3D games most of the time. I don't get how anybody would really consider the "New" line of games as anything better than "OK."

The first one was pretty good. For Wii I think it's nostalgia.

On the other hand I think that Super Mario Bros 3 and World are still very solid sidescrollers.

 

[miguk miguk]

Mario's pretty lame outside of the spin-offs and maybe the 3D games most of the time. I don't get how anybody would really consider the "New" line of games as anything better than "OK."

The New Super Mario Bros games were originally a return to form. Mario hadn't had a new 2D entry in forever at that point, and it didn't look like we'd ever get more of them. So it was pretty successful just based on not being another 3D game. The Wii game was good too, given that we hadn't had that on a console in a while. The problem comes from them trying to milk it for too long by reusing assets and not trying to move on to the next evolution. Super Mario Wonder did well at solving the issue.

 

[MemeAlert]

If it's Sonic x Shadow Generation-like I'd say why not.

But I wish the swapping mechanic was done better, maybe L1 and R1 or even having one button for a character so you'd basically swap fast.

Also I dislike that a character is bound to a formation so you're forced to be slow as hell as Fly.

Better than being slippery. Tails (Fly) isn't suppose to be fast, thats what the Speed characters like Sonic are there for.

 

[BulletHammer]

I think it's one of the more unique 3D entries in the franchise and they should revisit the three characters mechanic.

What I always disliked about the Adventure titles was how the game completely changes once you play as another character and slows down a lot. If they made an Adventure game where we could swap between Sonic, Knuckles and Tails on the fly it would be really awesome, imagine using Sonic to cover long distances, then swapping to Knuckles to climb walls, then to Tails so you could reach distant platforms by flying.

They would also be able to have more playable characters without having to create different story campaigns for all of them. With two different campaigns they could have 6 main characters without having to create entirely different stages for each one of them, that would save a lot of development time I think.

They should make a sequel, or atleast a spiritual sequel that takes all the good stuff from Heroes while discarding the bad stuff. Imo it would be one of the best 3D Sonic games of all time.

 

[MegaHiro91]

One word as to why Sonic Heroes ROCKS!!! This guy:

(Whom I btw hope to dear god appears in the Sonic 4 movie)

 

[Toppis Toppis]

One word as to why Sonic Heroes ROCKS!!! This guy:

View attachment 17738

(Whom I btw hope to dear god appears in the Sonic 4 movie)

that would be good for sonic 4

 

[MegaHiro91]

that would be good for sonic 4

I mean it only makes all the sense in the world since Metal Sonic was introduced in the mid-credits. He is likely gonna be the main antagonist of the next movie, and how can you possibly go bigger after a Death Egg Robot in Sonic 2 and stopping Space Colony Ark's death ray in Sonic 3? A giant mutated cyborg copy of the main hero is how!!

 

[MemeAlert]

I mean it only makes all the sense in the world since Metal Sonic was introduced in the mid-credits. He is likely gonna be the main antagonist of the next movie, and how can you possibly go bigger after a Death Egg Robot in Sonic 2 and stopping Space Colony Ark's death ray in Sonic 3? A giant mutated cyborg copy of the main hero is how!!

The Death Egg seeing how small the Eclipse Cannon was in Sonic Movie 3.