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Beloved Games you Hate [roundtable]
 
Much like every other entertainment medium in the planet, every video game save for a few exceptions I could probably count with my two hands, has a consensus attached to it - everyone either loves it, hates it, or something in between. That's because gamers usually expect something specific out of video games, and products either deliver or they don't. However, at the end of the day, we're all different, and sooner or later we're all bound to not follow the general consensus at some point, and video games are no exception.

I made this a roundtable so we can hopefully get some good discussions going, and be baffled at some of our fellow board members' choices. I'm sure some of you will be dumbfounded even at this OP.

So, post games everyone loves and you hate. Of course you can do any amount of games you want, and include descriptions only if you see fit. You can also add games you acknowledge to be well made games, but just aren't for you. Also, feel free to include games everyone hates and you love, I just didn't make that part of the main topic because it's not that common for that to happen. When games are generally considered horrible, it's usually because they're just not well made from a technical standpoint - no one can stand horrible cameras, textures, frame-rates or glitches abound. But if you can find an example of this, go ahead.

This should be good. Also, sorry if it's been done before. I don't remember if it has. Anyway, I'll start.

I Hate:

Kid Icarus

I hate this game. Granted I didn't play it in its entirety, I was fed up with it far before the final stretch of the game, but I completely disliked what I played of it. It stole the Metroid engine and made me go around in very generic looking stages attacking enemies with lame attacks. And constantly scrolling upwards (I know not the entire game is like this, but still) is so annoying in 2D a platforming game like this.

Animal Crossing

I had never played Animal Crossing until a few months ago. It didn't look like my type of game at all, so I steered clear. In what seemed like a call from destiny, a friend of mine recently let me borrow City Folk and said - here, you have to play it. You can't go on with your life until you play Animal Crossing. So I did. And, wow. What the hell do you do in this game? Seriously, though, I can see how people could get into this game. It's a good simulation game, and I can definitely see the Nintendo touch. I can feel it, almost. But the game bored me to no end. I put a couple hours into it and I never wanna see it again. Everyone says all Animal Crossing games are the same, so I feel I am entitled to say I hate the entire series.

Zelda II

I'm not completely alone on this one, I know, but it's still generally regarded as a good game. It's not a fun game at all. It's comprised of all these different "pieces" that ultimately don't add up at all. Towns, overworld with RPG-esque battles, experience points, AND side-scrolling gameplay? It never comes together, it's terrible. It doesn't help that it's extremely hard. But you know what's even harder? Finding a reason that justifies actually beating this game. Fuck it.

I hate the following more than the rest...

Gears of War

I should clarify before I begin, I haven't played the second one. And I don't want to. As for the first one, I played a substantial amount of the campaign and a bit of multiplayer, too. The multiplayer's alright, it's well designed, the problem is it has to work within the confines of the design of the game (of course), so... it sucks. First of all, the game is gray. I don't care what you have to say - it's gray. Yeah, it has some beautiful textures, but it's so unappealing to look at. I know people often complain about this in realistic HD games, but Gears is easily the worst offender in this aspect. So you already have a raised eyebrow from the minute you fire up the game, and then you start to play it. Your character moves like a tank (the "worse than Leon S. Kennedy" variety of tanks), the environments all look the same (of course) and are like 2x2. You have to take cover constantly and fire generic weapons at generic aliens. Yeah, it's a third person shooter which is kind of original, but it might as well have been an FPS, it's hard to tell the difference honestly. "Stop 'n' pop" doesn't make a shooting game more strategic - it makes it more boring.

And there's soon to be THREE of these games! Damn! Gears represents everything that's wrong with this generation of gaming (it only needs a 99 cent iOS game and we're golden), and people love it.

I'll post more games if they come to mind. Looking forward to your responses!

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05/21/11, 20:02    Edited: 05/21/11, 20:07
 
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Call of Duty or ANY war shooter

I'm sorry, but I'm just sick of War shooters and the obsession that western audiences have with them. Give me a good FPA title like Metroid Prime, Half-Life or Bioshock anyday.
05/21/11, 20:04   
05/21/11, 20:20   
I don't personally enjoy the dark, gritty games that have taken over a lot of the industry. I don't play games to feel upset and depressed. So I stay away from the Call of Dutys and the Bioshocks, though others love them dearly. And I understand why they love them, they just aren't for me!
05/21/11, 20:33   
Hate's a strong word, but I really, really don't like this game right here:



The battles are slow and too frequent, and the ship battles are agonizing. I have tried to get into this game, but I just can't.
05/21/11, 20:34   
@-JKR- I don't think Bioshock fits into that category. It's a beautiful and very original game.

And hate is just a simple, easy to understand word I used to make the title appealing. Of course you don't have to flat-out hate a game to include it. Just not be fond of it (you can't be indifferent, though)
05/21/11, 21:18   
Edited: 05/21/11, 21:21
@GelatinousEncore

Bioshock was just too dark for me, personally. I'm not a fan of that style of world.
05/21/11, 21:59   
Final Fantasy

Though I cut my teeth on FF II & FF III at launch...and consider it some of the best gaming of the early '90s, I just can't stand the franchise any more. The last game I truely enjoyed was FF VII on PSX.

Somewhere along the line, I just lost my taste for JRPGs. I still enjoy a few gems here and there (Valkyria Chronicles, Jeanne d'Arc, Lost Odyssey, Persona, etc.), by and large the whole genre feels incredibly dated and cliche. Final Fantasy sits atop that blanket sentiment, with its tired tropes and annoying/predictable characters and stories.
05/21/11, 22:04   
Twilight Princess
Twilight Princess
Twilight Princess
Mario Sunshine
05/21/11, 22:21   
Hate is strong, but...

I'll second (or fourth?) Mustache on Twilight Princess.

Not a fan of Resident Evil. I like playing the games, I just loathe the stories and the dialogue. It's campy, and campy's okay, but I feel like it takes itself too seriously.

Actually, I really do hate the Grand Theft Auto series. I haven't played it since the last release on the PS2. The cities weren't convincing enough for how much they were touted, the controls were terrible (I like to say the games played like a remote controlled brick), the graphics and frame rate were just garbage, and the core gameplay elements didn't capture me. I care not to try the new ones.
05/21/11, 22:51   
Not a fan of Grand Theft Auto, in general. Though I did end up really liking Chinatown Wars.

Yoshi's Story is the one game I can honestly say that I "hate." Boring level design, sloppy controls, annoying music, zero challenge. Unless you go for the incredibly tedious task of seeking out 30 melons in each stage, but that of course just makes the game even MORE boring. The only good thing about the game were the graphics - those were seriously some of the best 2D graphics and textures the industry saw that generation. Nintendo may have turned up the "cuteness factor" to 11 (which to many is overkill) but you can't deny all the colors, details, and silky-smooth animations weren't eye-candy back then.

It's just a freakin' shame it was wasted on such a garbage game.

Finally, as most everyone knows, I'm not a fan of FPS games. So any FPS game you can think of, you can safely assume I don't like it.
05/21/11, 22:57   
@New Forms

Have you played Fire Emblem at all? I also really dug the Tales of Symphonia pack on Gamecube/Wii, though your mileage may vary...
05/21/11, 22:58   
Damn you, Gelatinous! I love all of those games! RRRRGGGHHH!!

Hmm... I think I hate everything these days. Nah, not really. But MW2 stank. And so did Red Dead Redemption. And Alan Wake. I feel like a lot of the AAA HD games sort eschew gameplay evolution in favor of superficial flash, by which I mean that the gameplay doesn't really change at all from the beginning to the end. Only the context shifts. I typically don't enjoy those types of games.
05/21/11, 23:17   
Twilight Princess or Ocarina of Time. Both of those Zelda games I do not enjoy and cannot stand behind the people who praise them so highly. Especially those guys who ride the "revolutionary for its time" horse around like a cheap whore.

Final Fantasy VII and on I don't like, though strangely I kind of enjoyed VIII despite being pretty terrible itself. But melodrama on a massive scale with poor writing and even poorer gameplay direction does not sit well with me.
05/21/11, 23:50   
@ludist210

Yea, I don't think Skies of Arcadia is good either. I don't really hate it, but I hated playing it, if that makes sense
05/21/11, 23:57   
I was really expecting to see Metal Gear Solid mentioned here and am glad that it hasn't been brought up yet. It is one of my most treasured game series and I love it.

I haven't enjoyed a main series Final Fantasy game apart from Final Fantasy X, although that was an awesome game.
05/22/11, 00:07   
Edited: 05/22/11, 00:13
Not all of these games/series I "hate" necessarily, but to different extents I don't really like or care for them:


Metroid - I think this is one of the most overrated series of all time. I really don't feel it's anything special at all. I just find it to be very boring and tedious and repetitive, with almost nothing to draw me to keep on playing. I don't like the core gameplay, and it doesn't have an amazing story or anything to (somewhat) make up for that.

Call of Duty - I recently have started to enjoy FPSs, but my time with Modern Warfare: Reflex Edition was overall pretty annoying. The single-player consists of horrible ultra-linear level design, where the game wants you to progress one certain way, and if you don't do exactly what the game wants you to do you get killed and sent back to the last checkpoint. Making progress from checkpoint to checkpoint is not satisfying at all, and just feels like I'm getting by based on... sometimes trial and error, but it's occasionally even worse than that. Sometimes it feels like I made it to the next checkpoint purely based on luck. In any case, any game which encourages you to not actually kill every enemy (thanks to lots of them constantly respawning), and instead to just rush from vague checkpoint to checkpoint is not my idea of fun.

Final Fantasy X - This game is fucking horrible. I can't stand the story and characters. They make me want to drive my head into a wall. I've liked Final Fantasy VI and VII, but X doesn't measure up to them in any way. It's a million times more linear, and with a story and characters (and shitty dubbed voice acting!) that just frustrated me the whole time. I don't like anyone in this game, and I don't care about any of them. The best thing I can say about X is that the battle system is okay, but I prefer the battle systems of VI and VII over it.

Mega Man 3 - This is quite possibly my least favorite Mega Man game. I don't know what it is about the game, but it's one of the least satisfying for me to play. I'd put 2 or 9 or 7 above it any day.

Castlevania (mainly the original NES game) - I really dislike the controls in this game. Maybe it's because I didn't play it as a kid, but playing it within the last few years on the Virtual Console, it felt like a slower, clunkier, less exciting Ninja Gaiden. I'd choose that game any day over Castlevania.

Banjo-Kazooie - I used to like this as a kid, but in recent years I've gotten really tired of Rare's 3D platformer formula. It feels like Super Mario 64, with a bunch of unnecessary inane bullshit to collect, wasting the player's time.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker - I've always disliked the art style in this game, from the first time I saw it. I don't like the incredibly repulsive "chibi" look everything has. The game itself also has a lot of issues; I don't like the tedious nature of sailing, or changing the wind's direction, or the way the camera controls work in this game, or the island layout in general. Having a 7x7 grid for every single island feels unnatural, and only a handful of the islands have anything significant on them. This is easily my least favorite 3D Zelda, and possibly my least favorite Zelda game I've played.

MadWorld - This is like No More Heroes, minus everything that made me like No More Heroes. It's the Sucker Punch of video games.

No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle - This is like No More Heroes, minus (almost) everything that made me like No More Heroes.

Resident Evil 5 - This is like Resident Evil 4, minus everything that made me love Resident Evil 4 so much. Trying to make a "serious" story was a big mistake on Capcom's part. It ends up just feeling like some shitty summer blockbuster; far removed from Resident Evil 4's lovably cheesy cult action/horror feel. The gameplay is also pared down in almost every way from Resident Evil 4. Having forced co-op in single player is a shitty fucking idea, and the game offers even less exploration than Resident Evil 4. One of Resident Evil 4's biggest accomplishments were its setpieces, which all felt different from the last one you went through, which helped to keep the game from feeling repetitive. Resident Evil 5 does not accomplish this, so the majority of the game just feels like "shoot shoot shoot" over and over. The game's pacing is also really bad, and the game as a whole feels like someone took elements of Resident Evil 4 and cut-and-pasted them in some random order. Almost everything in this game has a parallel moment in 4, and its equivalent moment in 4 is almost always better. The only really good things I can say about this game are that the graphics are good (big fucking whoop), you can now control exactly how fast or slow you turn left/right while you're running, and you can now finally pre-aim the knife.


@Mr_Mustache I can't speak for Fire Emblem, but Tales of Symphonia and its sequel fall squarely into cliche JRPG stories.
05/22/11, 00:07   
For me it would have to be Metroid Prime 3, so incredibly overrated. The controls are cumbersome, bloated and... inelegant, they make the game a constant chore to play, jumping to the forefront your mind as you struggle with them instead melting away and becoming so intuitive you forget about them (like all good control schemes do). Plus the graphics are awful, human faces especially look very N64ish, it's embarrassing. It's especially ironic since Metroid Prime on the GCN is one of the greatest games every created, oh Retro how did you fall so far so fast? Even the art design in Metroid Prime 3 is lackluster and a clear step down from the previous Prime games. If I had to describe MP3 in one sentence it would be "More of the same, only worse in every way."
05/22/11, 00:12   
Edited: 05/22/11, 00:14
None spring to mind. I guess I hate every single RTS game I've ever played, so you can throw Warcraft and Starcraft in there. And I'm pretty cool on RPGs, though I don't outright hate playing them.

And I don't forgive people who hate Kid Icarus. Personally, I can't see how "stealing the Metroid engine" is a valid criticism of a first generation NES game that was made by the same team. **Mumble Grumble.**
05/22/11, 00:44   
Edited: 05/22/11, 00:47
@kriswright
Kid Icarus is one of the all time great NES games. It's a little bit difficult, but once you get past that it's an awesome game. I'm sad Kid Icarus Uprising is a Sin & Punishment clone though, it looks terrible. I'd much rather have a classic 2-D platformer, or a free-roaming 3-D game ala the more recent console Zeldas.
05/22/11, 00:56   
@kriswright

I don't care about the Metroid engine, I just think it sucks.
05/22/11, 00:56   
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