unpopular retro opinions

2 minutes ago, The Strife Commando said:

What about Opposing Force? It's less focused on story than Half-Life, has more weapons and enemies, and an upgraded multiplayer. Someone even said it was more Doom than Half-Life.

Never played it. 

Just now, hybridial said:

 

Never played it. 

I updated my post.

Get it, along with Blue Shift.

36 minutes ago, hybridial said:

Yeah, I can agree that's hyperbole, but statements like "it's the greatest game ever" or even qualified more as Best PC game ever or Best FPS ever, all statements I've seen be made not just by people, but in magazines and by journalists and so on and so forth... is also horrendous hyperbole. And the root of why I take such a disliking to it. What a fucking mediocre game to treat that way, is how I feel about it. 

 

I think it is, however, at least partially to blame for design approaches adopted in other games, but only partially, there were always other factors, always would be a lot of factors to something as broad as that, but, there is absolutely a pattern of very generic design in the FPS genre going through most of the 00s and 10s. Half Life doesn't deserve much blame for it I guess, it still happened though and it still was lame.

But you see, every time a great game came out it was considered to be the best thing since sliced bread, Doom was the same after all, and many games that followed. My, all these games battling for that spot, heh.

But as I said, I can understand why others don't like it and I'm fine with that, my only gripe is how overly judgemental and sentimental some had become in the recent years over it, like seriously, give it a break people, it's not like it ruined your lives forever...

I see you never played the expansions. Plot twist, I'm gonna say you should, and notice the choice of words, I said expansions not episodes. For once in life I actually agree with TSC on something (shocking, I know, somebody stab me), and you should surely play Opposing Force, it has the best gameplay of them all.

I know there's gonna be a part that will inconvenience you, though, as I don't like that aspect of the game either - the parts where you have to rely on followers for a few things, but thankfully they are short.

Otherwise yes, I am unironically suggesting that you should play more HL.

Just now, seed said:

I see you never played the expansions. Plot twist, I'm gonna say you should, and notice the choice of words, I said expansions not episodes.

Will you be deeply offended if I say I just don't really care to? I realise you wouldn't make the suggestion lightly, and had this been suggested to me a few years ago I might have done it but now I just don't really care enough to invest my time, I think Redneckerz wasn't wrong to observe my own waning enthusiasm for games in general. There's a fairly strict subset of games I do still care about to play but not much interest in going outside of it anymore. 

And yes, I know. It's also not worth my time to dog on  this issue so much either. It's not the best character flaw to have to hold onto such things. I actually really appreciated VGA's response, it really deflates that pointless indignation and makes me remember just how pointless it is.  

1 minute ago, hybridial said:

Will you be deeply offended if I say I just don't really care to?

Light Side Points Gained.

Influence Lost: seed.

Jk, not really, no. I suppose there's very specific things we like or are interested in, and past a certain point it's probably not much worth spending time with things one finds unappealing in the first place.

But it would be interesting to see how that would turn out. I do agree though, that the late 2000s all the way to the mid 2010s was... bad, really bad for shooters since it's when the generic military shooters came out - and for me personally, also marked a dramatic shift towards multiplayer, but honestly I find CoD to be the biggest offender here. Either way, hoping this decade will go in the other direction.

7 minutes ago, seed said:

Jk, not really, no. I suppose there's very specific things we like or are interested in, and past a certain point it's probably not much worth spending time with things one finds unappealing in the first place.

Out of curiosity, have you ever played the Baldur's Gate titles yourself or have any interest in doing so? Obviously you've played KOTOR 1 and 2 so you've got a bit of experience with the CRPG genre. I can't get into KOTOR II when I try to play it, because it seems very janky to me, even in ways the first one I don't remember being. But issues with the storytelling aside I thought KOTOR was fun, but I still play Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 now for a reason, a real love for how those games were designed, I don't think the CRPG has ever been done better, and I'd still recommend them to people with the right mindset.  

26 minutes ago, seed said:

In what part of the world do you live for something like disliking a franchise to be almost "socially unacceptable"?

In any given year, there are certain games that are most likely to be played when you get a group of people together. I enjoyed the Halo years, avoided the COD years, etc. Mario Kart seems to be eternal however.

Re Half-Life, I think one problem is over-stretching these genre names. It's not very useful to say "FPS games are supposed to be X and not Y." The success of HL stimulated a trend of increasingly less-interactive videogames based around passively consuming static content. I don't play those games. But games that I do enjoy are thriving, so it doesn't matter.

@hybridial I was firmly a Fallout 1 guy during the heyday of BG, but I bought BG2EE to play co-op with friends recently, and as someone who's pretty familiar with 2.5e AD&D I really dig it.

KOTOR was another favorite of mine. Beat it maybe five times? But I don't remember it in enough detail to argue about it now.

19 minutes ago, hybridial said:

Out of curiosity, have you ever played the Baldur's Gate titles yourself or have any interest in doing so? Obviously you've played KOTOR 1 and 2 so you've got a bit of experience with the CRPG genre. I can't get into KOTOR II when I try to play it, because it seems very janky to me, even in ways the first one I don't remember being. But issues with the storytelling aside I thought KOTOR was fun, but I still play Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 now for a reason, a real love for how those games were designed, I don't think the CRPG has ever been done better, and I'd still recommend them to people with the right mindset.  

Janky in what way? I find it mechanically superior but just like with RPGs in general the beginning always sucks, a lot - hits miss a lot, few powers, lame equipment, etc. And being built right on top off Kotor 1, it's pretty much the same in these respects, but I generally found it less clunky than the first for sure. In the first one there's just way too few levels and powers to gain... and few powers in a game like these is... disappointing.

If you do get farther in TSL I can give you a tip or two, for improving weapons/lightsabers, feats, and some influence spots, but the latter is mainly applicable to DS, I'm not really interested in playing LS in these games, as you know too well already. When you get to the prestige class though, I'll tell you right now that there's clear winners and losers - for DS you want the Sith Marauder, and for LS, I think it was called Jedi Watchman.

Note that to get there you need strong either LS or DS affinity, but typically this is no sooner than level 15. And also, for planet order, I suggest Dantooine, Nar Shaddaa, Korriban, Dxun/Onderon. Many choose Nar Shaddaa first but I personally advise against that as Goto's Yacht is... quite something if you are weak, and you will also not have a lightsaber by then, you want Dantooine for that. There is also the droid planet as part of the alternative version of TSLRCM, but I never went there, I'm hearing that planet is just... not very good anyway.

But coming back to Baldur's Gate, no, but they very much are on my list to play. Sadly I likely won't be getting to them too soon since, again as you know, I'm bankrupt and I really don't have anything to spare for the time being. When I can, I probably will, but I've got other things to worry about now than new games.

5 minutes ago, seed said:

Janky in what way?

In the most fundamental way, it seems kind of buggy and glitchy to me, in the tutorial level alone I just had several issues with the camera and weird graphical behaviour and this is based off the Steam version which did get an update at some point to modernise it a little. But I might try it again, since they added controller support and all that, not that it matters as much to me with games like that.

I am glad to hear you're open to trying the Baldur's Gate series. Upfront I would just say, start with the first game, ignore Dragonspear and go to 2. Dragonspear makes more sense to play afterwards if you're still wanting more. It has... a lot of issues, but I'm speaking more from a design standpoint than deliberately shitting on it. But they designed a lot of the combat to be for players who are well versed in the combat system, which, I get why, but that is why I would recommend it, if at all, only after 2. 

Otherwise, read the manuals because with these it's not an option and I would happilly offer you any insight or advice you might seek. And at least, they're inexpensive on sale and there's a lot of content so you will get a lot of play time for a relatively low cost when you feel ready for it. 

2 minutes ago, hybridial said:

In the most fundamental way, it seems kind of buggy and glitchy to me, in the tutorial level alone I just had several issues with the camera and weird graphical behaviour and this is based off the Steam version which did get an update at some point to modernise it a little. But I might try it again, since they added controller support and all that, not that it matters as much to me with games like that.

 

I am glad to hear you're open to trying the Baldur's Gate series. Upfront I would just say, start with the first game, ignore Dragonspear and go to 2. Dragonspear makes more sense to play afterwards if you're still wanting more. It has... a lot of issues, but I'm speaking more from a design standpoint than deliberately shitting on it. But they designed a lot of the combat to be for players who are well versed in the combat system, which, I get why, but that is why I would recommend it, if at all, only after 2. 

 

Otherwise, read the manuals because with these it's not an option and I would happilly offer you any insight or advice you might seek. And at least, they're inexpensive on sale and there's a lot of content so you will get a lot of play time for a relatively low cost when you feel ready for it. 

You may want to tweak TSL then, despite the patch I also found it runni g noticeably worse than the first game. You may want to switch to the legacy branch in that case, which is the original, final version before the major update. I found disabling Threaded Optimization and VSync (capping the FPS to 60 instead) to help tremendously.

I'll keep this in mind whenever I get to Baldur then 👌.

I've seen BG Steam keys for sale on 3rd-party sites for around $5. Something to keep in mind.

Critics think Half-Life is the best fps game ever made besides Call of Duty. It still ends up in top 10s too.

Painkiller Resurrection's comic-based cutscenes aged better than OG Painkiller's CGI cutscenes. Sounds already obvious enough, the problem is that all other Painkiller games never receive the same level of reception as the original game (and Battle Out of Hell). Now that I've got more insight on the series, I'm starting to know more than I did months ago.

Also, now that THQ Nordic no longer owns Painkiller, I'd like to see the new IP holder compile all pre-Hell & Damnation games into a single collection for modern PC & ports. Yeah, even Resurrection and Recurring Evil, because those especially need some fixes as well. Wild Bill gets so much shit for having such less-than-stellar games featuring him, but I think he's just as legit of a character as Daniel Garner and even Belial.

Adults have no business playing Mario or pokemon games.

To me, Super Mario Bros. 3 is a lot better than Mario World.

I just love the Abstract design in Mario 3, Especially in World 7 where it just goes all out with insane challenge levels that make little sense. Mario World looks amazing and gives a sense of place but at the cost that things and obstacles had to "Make sense" and not just be a full on obstacle course, which I enjoyed a lot more.

In a way Mario 3 took the Doom 2 approach of gameplay over sense of place.

19 hours ago, seed said:

For HL, though, I am looking for an opinion of someone who likes the series, yet was disappointed by the sequels.

Well personally speaking, I didn't like HL2 Ep1 much. My main gripe with it was the overly long dark sections (the chapter that introduced those zombines). Another part I didn't like much in Ep1 was the part where we have to move back and forth to areas to rescue survivors.

Ep2 was fantastic though. I feel like Ep2 has all of the strengths of base HL2, but without any of the pacing issues. The last fight in Ep2 is probably my favorite part in the entire franchise. Also I generally liked that Ep2 is much more combat focused than base HL2 and Ep1.

36 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

Well personally speaking, I didn't like HL2 Ep1 much. My main gripe with it was the overly long dark sections (the chapter that introduced those zombines). Another part I didn't like much in Ep1 was the part where we have to move back and forth to areas to rescue survivors.

 

Ep2 was fantastic though. I feel like Ep2 has all of the strengths of base HL2, but without any of the pacing issues. The last fight in Ep2 is probably my favorite part in the entire franchise. Also I generally liked that Ep2 is much more combat focused than base HL2 and Ep1.

Indeed, mostly the same for me except for exactly what you didn't like in EP1.

HL always had an element of horror to it, and this was EP1's take on it, a survival-esque chapter, with almost no guns, just the GG and the USP - and Alyx taking care of Barnacles. You have to rely on other things to survive, and I actually liked that. There's lots of flares around anyway, to rapidly burn down zombies, cars, and physics objects. And you do get the shotgun near the end. I agree that it wasn't as much fun as other parts, and surely not as much as Ravenholm, but unlike that one, I think hopelessness and oppression was the main goal. You likely won't feel much joy when going through it, and no doubt that was its purpose. I think it's no coincidence the chapter is called "Lowlife".

The escort part yes, wasn't that great, but it's very short so it doesn't matter too much, and unlike other games you don't automatically fail the game if they die, to make it frustrating.

Agreed about EP2. Funnily the Strider battle is something some players hate about it, insofar as they consider it a difficulty spike. And sure it isn't a breeze, but I found it no more difficult than the Combine assault inside the base. It's only difficult if your aim is bad and miss the Striders with the Magnusson device, and if you want to save all the cabins, as the final wave has Striders attacking simultaneously in multiple locations, + that one achievement, if you're a completionist.

Otherwise, it isn't too bad, and frankly expecting the final battle in a game to be easy sounds supremely stupid to me. The last thing you want them to have is an anti-climatic end, and I'm glad EP2 had none of that. Neither did HL2 or EP1's solo Strider. I'm sure the reaction would be the same if it was easier - "but muh climax... ".

21 hours ago, seed said:

 For HL, though, I am looking for an opinion of someone who likes the series, yet was disappointed by the sequels

It has been a while since I played HL2. But while HL was mostly an exploratory adventure through abandoned labs, HL2 was mostly in barren outdoors areas, which were very unconvincing. It had sections of boat driving, sections of physics puzzles, sections of fighting, then driving a buggy around ... you can say it "adds variety" but for me, the pacing was very off. I think the designers fell in love with their new engine capabilities (physics and driving, magnificent shader-powered water effects, impressively destructible crates etc) and the result is not as tight as HL. Give me a crowbar and a few weapons and let me crawl through vents in high-tech labs dammit! Not drive a shitty buggy in a barren open area with a single shed on the side of the road!

Also I felt it had bot-like enemies ... I liked the marine AI of the original way more. The way they moved was better and they were more dangerous, I think it was close quarters battle, that's why. The marines and aliens of HL felt more beefy, too. The HL2 enemies die and get pushed more easily and they ragdoll way too much when dying, it makes them feel like puppets. When you get that weird gun at the end of the game you just ragdoll them around, the game turns into a parody, it is even worse than HL's Xen section and shitty monster baby final boss. I guess they fell in love with the ragdoll features of the engine! Oh and the zombie and headcrab enemies are more threatening in claustrophobic OG HL than in HL2.

Music and sound in HL is way more beefy than HL2 from what I remember. Remember the riding the elevator up, the music starting and all hell breaking loose in HL? The Surface Tension set piece battle if I remember correctly? Don't remember anything like that in HL2.

HL gun sounds are beefy and the HEV suit sounds are iconic. I don't think HL2 lives up to that.

As for the story of HL2, I don't think they sell the "enslaved humanity" very well at all. Very barren and not enough combat between ... others. In HL you often witness combat between guards and aliens, or marines vs aliens ... you can "use" them and guide them. In Opposing Forces it is a main feature of the game, amazing! 

39 minutes ago, VGA said:

It has been a while since I played HL2. But while HL was mostly an exploratory adventure through abandoned labs, HL2 was mostly in barren outdoors areas, which were very unconvincing. It had sections of boat driving, sections of physics puzzles, sections of fighting, then driving a buggy around ... you can say it "adds variety" but for me, the pacing was very off. I think the designers fell in love with their new engine capabilities (physics and driving, magnificent shader-powered water effects, impressively destructible crates etc) and the result is not as tight as HL. Give me a crowbar and a few weapons and let me crawl through vents in high-tech labs dammit! Not drive a shitty buggy in a barren open area with a single shed on the side of the road!

 

Also I felt it had bot-like enemies ... I liked the marine AI of the original way more. The way they moved was better and they were more dangerous, I think it was close quarters battle, that's why. The marines and aliens of HL felt more beefy, too. The HL2 enemies die and get pushed more easily and they ragdoll way too much when dying, it makes them feel like puppets. When you get that weird gun at the end of the game you just ragdoll them around, the game turns into a parody, it is even worse than HL's Xen section and shitty monster baby final boss. I guess they fell in love with the ragdoll features of the engine! Oh and the zombie and headcrab enemies are more threatening in claustrophobic OG HL than in HL2.

 

Music and sound in HL is way more beefy than HL2 from what I remember. Remember the riding the elevator up, the music starting and all hell breaking loose in HL? The Surface Tension set piece battle if I remember correctly? Don't remember anything like that in HL2.

 

As for the story of HL2, I don't think they sell the "enslaved humanity" very well at all. Very barren and not enough combat between ... others. In HL you often witness combat between guards and aliens, or marines vs aliens ... you can "use" them and guide them. In Opposing Forces it is a main feature of the game, amazing! 

I see, now that's more like it.

Though unsurprisingly I do not agree with some of these points, I like seeing such a perspective to better understand what the folks who liked the original found disappointing in the sequels.

The enslaved humanity part was downplayed significantly in the final product, but this was a lot more prominent back when HL2 was still set in the US, and the Combine was polluting and draining resources a lot more visibly, had a shit ton of Combine propaganda everywhere, even Breen himself was spreading that directly, through Consul Cast devices (take a look here, true citizen), plus it played humans for fools more (remember the Manhack Arcade for one), and even included child labor but that was an obvious no-go. I liked the cyberpunk tone and edge of the old design a lot more too, but honestly HL is not a franchise that's really suited for such a take.

It was never an ultra serious series, and with some of the old concepts, it surely tried a bit too hard. It seems Valve never really wanted that, but tried to revive old concepts multiple times. Look at the Wasteland for instance, which they tried to fully feature more than once, especially in Aftermath, but dumped it for forests and wilderness in EP2 ultimately, for the third time.

Instead, the final product is a lot more subtle, where the slavery part is portrayed more through details. Drained oceans as seen in Highway 17/Sandtraps, frequent apartment raids and abuse early on, empty playgrounds and the mention of the suppresion field, suggesting that the current generation was the last and there were no more kids left anywhere, close monitoring, hideouts in canals, citizens taken to Nova Prospekt to be turned into soldiers and Stalkers, bombing entire areas and cities with headcrabs, Metrocops beating the shit out of them, etc. I think it sells that narrative quite well, but it IS a lot less in-your-face than it used to be.

As for the final section, nah, I'm not seeing how that turns the game into a joke, your weapons get confiscated and you get a super powered GG due to it absorbing the field's energy instead of getting destroyed by it, allowing it to now destroy organisms too. And it was great, both there and at the beginning of EP1.

The ragdolls are really a consequence of the physics, Havok, which a lot of games from that period used. I personally liked that, and I think it worked out quite well and much better than what followed, once ragdolls got dumped in games and reverted to animation-based deaths, I was never fond of those, apart from maybe old games because it was often goofy.

The AI, no, that's a major disagreement for me. The AI in HL1 may have been effective but it could also freak out at times, HL2 was superior to it in all possible ways, and it still holds up to this day, despite seeing it done quite a bit better in newer games. AI like that of HL1 had no chance of surviving the levels of HL2, it would've only exhibited how primitive and limiting it was, and in very awkward ways too - like you'd see Combine making suicidal pushes, alone, and a lot.

Music and sound design... well, that's subjective, but just like most old games, HL1's sfx had something special and extremely goofy about it, and I do find its sounds quite a bit more iconic than those of HL2 due to that. The scientist screams, doors, elevators, gib sounds, explosions, etc. But HL2's are iconic in their own way too, I find the shotgun, GG, .357, Combine death sounds, Snipers, and especially the AR2 etc. quite memorable. It definitely is missing that goofy element of the original, but you could say that about pretty much any game that started in the 90s and received sequels in the modern age. Doom is no different, for instance.

Half-Life 1 and its expansions are way better than Half-Life 2 and its episode expansions. Gameplay is very good.

Since we're on the topic of Half-Life...

HL 2 is better. The sandbox was way more open-ended than HL 1.

Half-Life and Opposing Force had multiplayer in them where as HL2's multiplayer was separate.

1 hour ago, TakenStew22 said:

Since we're on the topic of Half-Life...

 

HL 2 is better. The sandbox was way more open-ended than HL 1.

bruh how tf is that unpopular

25 minutes ago, Mr. Freeze said:

 

bruh how tf is that unpopular

I've heard mostly the majority stating HL1 was better.

Resident Evil was always an action series.

On 11/8/2020 at 12:58 PM, seed said:

 

This is not the first time I hear this, but I do want to hear some reasons from people who hold this view.

 

What did you not like about HL's sequels? My only personal gripe with HL2 in particular is the very slow pace for the first 3 chapters, but that's about it. The episodes solve that problem for me.

I like Half-Life 2, but I think that overall it's a much weaker game than Half-Life, the level design is far more linear (or at least feels like it), and there's far less variety in enemies and environments, as well as less variety in weapons.

I wish the 6DOF genre was more popular. I never understood why people found them so hard to handle (from controlling point of view). When the controls are set up properly, the games are straightforward.

For example, in case of Descent 2, I have WASD for move forward, strafe left, backward and strafe right respectively. Ctrl and space are for moving down and up in altitude. Q and E for bank left and right. And shift for afterburner (which is like sprinting in FPS games).

Also Descent 3 (despite the fact that I have only watched videos of it) looks like a great game. I feel that D3 is a criminally underrated masterpiece. Someone should definitely remaster it.

1 hour ago, ChopBlock223 said:

I like Half-Life 2, but I think that overall it's a much weaker game than Half-Life, the level design is far more linear (or at least feels like it), and there's far less variety in enemies and environments, as well as less variety in weapons.

I would say it's less linear actually.

The original had non-linear parts too, but those are mainly found on On A Rail, and frankly that chapter is not as non-linear as much as it is confusing. I was never particularly fond of it for this reason. The outdoor sections of HL2 do a much better job at giving a feeling of non-linearity, especially in Highway 17/Sandtraps than HL1 ever did. Not even Xen was what could be considered non-linear when looking at games like SS2.

As for the enemy variety, now this I'm not sure I really get. It is true that you mostly fight Combine or zombies in HL2, but the original didn't have that much more enemies either. It had a few more Xenians, but most of those would've been extremely out of place in HL2. Valve was wise to keep only the Vorts, but I do feel they could've saved one in particular - the Bullsquid, which was originally supposed to be encountered in the canal levels. Alien Controllers, Alien Grunts, or even Gonarch? No, those could never work.

They've ultimately kept only what really worked, and is encountered for a reason and consistently. Although I would have liked them to preserve the Bullsquid for one, it didn't have much point. Keep it to encounter only in a few maps, then never again? Nah. Could they come up with different enemies then? Yes, and they did, but as seen in the old concepts, many of those simply couldn't be made to work reliably and be fun as well. The Hydra, Combine Assassin, Cremator, Combine Guard, and so on, none of those worked out for one reason or another, and once the game changed direction, they no longer felt like they had a place, as their design was deeply rooted in a bygone era.

3 minutes ago, seed said:

The original had non-linear parts too, but those are mainly found on On A Rail, and frankly that chapter is not as non-linear as much as it is confusing.

Heh you'd expect something called "on a rail" to be very linear instead.