The Hot Topic Returns

[HandsomeDead]

There's a lot of niche games I like or find interesting but one that does stand out as one of my favourite in the genre it's in Drill Dozer on the GBA.  It's a really cool puzzle platformer with decent, feel good action, too.  It has quality pixel art as well.  It just is one of my favourite games on the system that I feel like is barely talked about.

Except by me, I'll bring it up any chance I get.

 

[Sly Reflex]

For me it's probably the Creeper World games. Tower Defence mixed with RTS and puzzles. It's a real shame nobody else has played it, I think it'd win a few over here.

[radiofloyd]

Does anyone remember the PS1 game Silent Bomber? I really liked that game.

[Nag]

 

Quote

Readers name the games they think don’t deserve their bad reputation, from Fallout 76 to DmC Devil May Cry.

 

The subject for this week’s Hot Topic was suggested by reader Dory. It involved games that are thought to be terrible but that you like, ones that are considered mediocre, or even something that’s acknowledged to be good but you think is even better.

 

We had lots of difference suggestions in each category, but the most common answers were No Man’s Sky and games as a service titles like Fallout 76 and Sea Of Thieves.

 

Easy one for me this week DEAD SPACE 3...

 

Dead Space 3 gets an unwarranted amount of hate in my opinion, mainly down to the inclusion of microtransactions... something that's mentioned once and then relegated to a subheading that you never need to click on. The player certainly never needs to rely on them even on the hardest setting.

 

Great game and no amount of Internet whining can change my mind.?

[OCH]

 

Mortal Kombat: The Deadly Alliance Trilogy

 

There is a certain try-hard part of the MK community that likes to retro-actively turn their noses up at the 3D era. Alongside them are the section of the Fighting Game fanbase that refuses to move beyond 2D. The mechanics are all unrefined by today's standards. Plus most of the new human cast were very forgettable. But this was a revolutionary step forward for the series as a whole. With a storyline that many regard as the best written MK has ever had (including that of the NRS trilogy). Since it included just about everyone in a tonally consistent way into the narrative (aside from the joke Kharacters). Being a fan of monster/boss characters, I was also very well catered for in this era, too. Maybe Iron Galaxy or Project Soul could refine a Trilogy Collection someday.

[Maryokutai]

Some weird examples from them there, No Man's Sky and Sea of Thieves certainly have grown past their initial disappointing states and are now considered really good game.

 

For me the first that comes to mind is Mass Effect Andromeda. It's nowhere close to the trilogy but it's a solid game in its own right but it never recovered from the "bad animations" memes from pre-release footage that always gets brought up by people who haven't played it.

 

Another one might be Halo 5, which kind of completely ruined the story and made Master Chief a guest character but that game had such a fun campaign. Also one of few blockbuster titles on Xbox One that runs at 60fps even on the base model. Yes, there's that copy-paste boss, but other than that it was a good shooter.

 

A couple of older ones might be Too Human (flawed and unfinished, but really good post-game), Starfox Adventures (attaching that franchise to it did unnecessary damage to what is a decent action-adventure), Skyward Sword, Soul Calibur V.

[radiofloyd]

Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Many reviews of Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition said something like “still the highlight of the series” but I couldn’t disagree more. For me the sequel was miles better. It was just so well made, so interesting, so fun to play, and it got better and better as it went along. The fact that the game has this beautiful Irish choral music (hidden until deep into the game) was just the icing on the cake for me.

[OCH]

46 minutes ago, Maryokutai said:

Starfox Adventures (attaching that franchise to it did unnecessary damage to what is a decent action-adventure)

Agreed. Having finished the entire game. Despite loving Star Fox as a franchise, even I felt the final fight against Andross was really poorly tacked on. If the finished product had been the initial Dinosaur Planet, I think it would have gained a fanbase very quickly. Much like if DmC had been its own thing.

[one-armed dwarf]

Kingdom Hearts III, I think? I can't quite connect to the feelings of disappointment people had with that game when they waited 13 years for it, cause I just tuned out from that series until the game actually came out. So I'm not gonna say to them that they're wrong about it or anything, because I think that can be patronising to listen to. But I do think the game is pretty underappreciated and it's combat is a lot of fun if you don't use the big 'attraction' mechanics or whatever, the ones where you murder ppl with unsafe Disneyland rides

 

I think the Yozora fight from the DLC is some real cool shit, again don't really care for or care about any of the story implications for where they go with it, just appreciate the way it plays.

[DANGERMAN]

I feel like Disturbed Swan could fill this topic on his own

 

I think in general, Sonic. Not that there hasn't been bad games, but the revisionism that it was never good annoys me a bit because you sound like a lunatic defending Sonic

 

Nothing else really springs to mind, I'm sure there is stuff. I will say, what I played of Fallout 76 wasn't terrible, it wasn't amazing, but had it launched in a better state having not followed Fallout 4, and been presented to people a bit better, I think the reception to it could actually have been alright

[mfnick]

43 minutes ago, DANGERMAN said:

think in general, Sonic. Not that there hasn't been bad games, but the revisionism that it was never good annoys me a bit because you sound like a lunatic defending Sonic

This defo. Everyone turns their nose up and even say the original MD ones are terrible now which is just not true. & it’s not just about going fast, they have proper platforming in them. Since the MD days there’s been the Advance series, the Rush games, Generations and Mania which have all been great. 
 

DmC is one I agree with. I think it may be my favourite entry in the series (not played V yet). The backlash just because he looked different and didn’t have white hair was ridiculous. 
 

FO76 defenders are having a fucking giraffe though. Not just a terrible game but everything around it is terrible, the monetisation of near essential features like the scrap box thing, the bag debacle, people’s details being accessible etc. Madness. 

[HandsomeDead]

People who think DmC is a bad game are just weebs and they're full of shite opinions.  Especially when you have DMC2 sitting there, which in fact I'd be more interested in hearing people make this case for.

 

But I suppose this got me thinking more philosophically about what a bad game is and peoples relationship with them, because why not on a Sunday afternoon?

But basically these games that are considered bad are by a lot of measures pretty bad.  I don't think they're misunderstood or secretly good actually, most of the time.

 

For example if I were to give a straight answer I could bring up my favourite hot mess, Devil's Third (see also most of Suda51's output).  And it's purely because it's a flavour of trash I like.  I'm not gonna sit here and say most of the things generally said about it are wrong... a few are if memory serves but I'm not dying on a hill for it.

Sometimes you just connect with a game and have fun despite all the janky nonsense going on as well.  I think I'm just saying it's fine to like games that suck, you're probably a bore if you don't at all.  But let's just not pretend they're good.

?NORMALIZE?ADMITTING?TO?LIKING?BAD?GAMES

 

 

I don't think it's that unusual to thinking a mediocre game is better than it's reputation.  My hot take of the day is most popular games are just mediocre ones with a larger consensus of a perceived x-factor.  But some just don't tap into a larger audience for a myriad of reasons, with all types of validity or lack there of.  Examples are everywhere.  Let's just say Marvel's Avengers fits here but so, so many others do too.

 

 

A game that is considered good but is actually better is actually a pretty interesting thing to think about.  I kinda want to say The Last of Us because I don't think it's combat system is appreciated enough but I think there's probably a better example.  But this has gone on long enough, I'm done thinking about it.

[mfnick]

2 minutes ago, HandsomeDead said:

these games that are considered bad are by a lot of measures pretty bad

Yea this is something with games, a game can be objectively bad. Frame rates, controls, responsiveness etc. If these are bad, the game is bad. Simple. Doesn’t mean some enjoyment can’t be gained from them though, like you say. The game is still bad though. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I wont' spend time relitigating the DmC stuff* cause it gets a bit cyclical but it wasn't the white hair. His hair was white in-game anyway, eventually. It also isn't a bad game either and is better than DMC4 probably as a complete package can be, but if you're the kind of weeb like me who does nerd out on finding the ultimate way to express creativity in games like that DmC wasn't really comparable to some of the other titles cause it's such a different design philosophy. It is good to uplift the skill floor cause DMC4 was a bit bad in that regard, but it would also be good to keep the skill ceiling at least close to as high. I have similar feelings over how certain classes get tuned over time in XIV, where they remove some of the more finicky stuff but also with it some of the decision making that can make them satisfying to play.

 

But yea, the backlash was overhate and it turned into a weird culture war that's comparable to something like The Last Jedi

 

*beyond this post at least, cause I'm getting called out lol ?

 

If we want to talk about bad games ppl like well I'm a big Drakengard fan, check out some footage of those games if you want.

 

 

[OCH]

I don't think I played more of DmC than the demo, at the time, but I thought it was alright. Having only spent about the same amount of time with DMC 1, I'm not really invested enough in the DMC franchise to draw a line in the sand, I guess.

 

Another game that came to me was Enslaved: Journey to the West. It was fun, I enjoyed it. Other than the combat being a little repetitive, I don't get the hate for it. Of which I've read there is a lot.

[mfnick]

2 minutes ago, OCH said:

Enslaved: Journey to the West. It was fun, I enjoyed it. Other than the combat being a little repetitive, I don't get the hate for it. Of which I've read there is a lot.

Really? Don’t think I’ve seen any of that, if so that’s another. I loved Enslaved. 

[Nag]

I thought Enslaved was well liked as well tbf...

[spatular]

5 hours ago, radiofloyd said:

Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

 

i didn't realise this wasn't liked that much but agree it was great.

 

i'm struggling to think of anything that's really rubbish that i liked, there probably is something but i can't think of it. i can think of some but it was more hate because of other reasons rather than the games being bad, like recently project cars 3 got a lot of hate from project cars fans, understndably because it's quite a departure and probably should have been called something else, but it's really good. similar for the persona rhythm games that i think are brilliant but get mixed impressions i think because of persona fans wanting more persona and not rhythm action games. and again similar for the ridge racer game that bugbear made, it wasn't amazing but was a pretty fun game that wasn't much like ridge racer.

 

edit - deathsmiles 2 was not well liked, i thought it was pretty good but not as good as the first one.

[Sly Reflex]

A few entries for me.

 

MGSV. Yeah, it sucks that the story just flounders towards the end, but the game itself is grand. It's a nice world to fuck about in and see what you can get away with.

 

ESO, although I think this maybe falls into the No Mans Sky and Sea of Thieves territory now. As a game it works on so many levels, it's clear that a lot of thought went into it and the cross over it has for the solo players that migrate from the mainline games looking for more. Not to say that it's exactly like for like because it isn't, far from it. But if you want more from TES you could give it a chance. Even if you're not that bothered ad you just want a social game to play it fits the bill.

 

Finally EDF. Yes, I seem to bring this game series up each time I can, but it really is a slice of brilliance. Issue is the best of it is in Inferno, which is locked behind hours of levelling up. Closest thing I can really compare multiplayer to on Inferno is something like Raids in Destiny where if someone drops the ball it's almost certainly a wipe. You have to plan hard, be meticulous and also pray that your team mates are not going to let you down.

[bellow]

Final fantasy 15. Don't get me wrong. I understand it's utter garbage, with the most pointless open world ever rendered in a videogame. But I've played the full game twice, and the pocket edition once.

 

I don't know if ff10-2 was badly regarded in it's day, but it's still my second favourite, after 12.