You guys may not agree, but I think we've been in desperate need of a bullshit thread, now that it's summer and I have more time off.
I've found that many of you share the same views as I do about Apple, which many of my peers do not. In fact, basically everyone I know in person (including my best friends) would disagree with most every item on this list. I think it would be interesting to see how all of your views differ from those of my friends and family; two of my closest friends do think I'm too cynical, but I tell them I'm just being too realistic for them.
I tried to rank the items, but I found myself having trouble ordering a lot of them, so I just made a tier list. Individual items in each tier can be in any order. Anyway, without further a do...
God Tier:Apple
Steve Jobs
Texas
(you have to live here to know)
S Tier:Vine (thank heaven this dumbass service is dead. Here's to hoping Twitter and Snapchat slide off into the abyss with it.)
EA (would be in God Tier if people didn't call them out. unlike Apple for the most part)
BioWare
Most Oscar nominated/winning movies (how did
anyone enjoy Brooklyn?)
Most American made music from the late 90's and onward
American Football
Squaresoft
Any RPG ever made
Pumpkin spice
Coconut
Seinfeld (I hadn't watched enough of this to really form an opinion, but it's a sitcom, so...)
A Tier:Blizzard
Call of Duty (even in its dire state, it's still a shit game)
Overwatch (especially as an esport)
Super Smash Bros for Wii U (especially as an esport)
Super Mario Maker
Any Marvel movie ever made
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (definitely better than Rogue One, but that much more overrated too)
Minecraft (at least it's recognized as a little kid's game now)
Any Youtuber with over 3M subscribers (although Watchmojo is my guilty pleasure...)
Avatar (would be S Tier, but I think more people now see this movie as the Hollywood cash grab it is)
B Tier:Ridley Scott
Steven Spielberg
George Lucas
Star Wars: Rogue One
Netflix Originals
Beats branded headphones (they're definitely declining in popularity, which isn't why they aren't in a higher tier)
Half-Life 1 & 2
Resident Evil / Bio Hazard series
C Tier:Terminator 2
Sony
Satoru Iwata (much of the initial fuss has gone down, but if you bring it back up...)
James Cameron
Skyrim
D Tier:The Legend of Zelda series
Can I add any music by Square[soft] to your list?
You can put blizzard on that list. They get a medal for continuing to develop/support diablo 2, but their high water mark has passed. Also, some of the good stuff came from a company they acquired.
FrankenGraphics wrote:
their high water mark has passed
As evidenced by their latest POS.
ccovell wrote:
Can I add any music by Square[soft] to your list?
YES!
I take it you don't mean Positively Outstanding Service?
I haven't played Overwatch so i cannot comment on that, but i thought it was good for them to reach a new/other field of audience. However, i think they lost me as early as WC3. It's more of an aesthetic issue for me.
Yeah, I mean Piece of Shit.
I played it for 5 minutes at a friend's house, and it's just casual "zany" shooter number 3,000. Move along.
FrankenGraphics wrote:
i thought it was good for them to reach a new/other field of audience.
The only audience they should be reaching are dumpster divers.
Can i put ridley scott on the list? (possibly also spielberg and lucas). Citing an article, " In March 2017, Scott said, 'If you really want a franchise, I can keep cranking it for another six.'"
God please no.
Absolutely! (This is even more fun than I thought it would be...
) Where do you suggest they should go? I might end up making a D Tier. For example, The Legend of Zelda OoT is a great game, but being the best rated game on Metacritic is a bit absurd. (Although Tony Hawk Pro Skater is 2nd?)
What do you think of James Cameron? The Terminator is the only movie I really like from him (it's probably my favorite movie ever, actually); the rest are just CG showcases.
Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot Skyrim. A lot to do, but not much reason to do any of it. It's just so gray and boring that I never got into it, and I fully beat Oblivion back in 2010. However I tried playing Oblivion not too long ago, but I just couldn't get into it. How does it manage to look worse, and perform even worse than an original Xbox game when it's on the Xbox 360?
I suppose their aura of genius is disputed, but they have their place in the hollywood pantheon. B tier perhaps?
Cameron is ok, made films that didn't make me cringe up until avatar. Really liked Aliens, needless to say. Does he have an alleviated elevated status?
Yeah, I just put him down one, along with adding Skyrim, Minecraft, a blanket "Youtubers with over 3M subscribers" because they're either clickbait or some shitty Minecraft letsplay. The only James Cameron movies I have seen are The Terminator, Terminator 2, Titanic, and Avatar, only one of which I actually enjoyed (each one worse than the last).
Is skyrim any different than FO3, FO:NV? I played Oblivion a lot but just couldn't motivate myself because of the very same reason you mentioned with later games. It's impossible to care for the side quests OR main quest (felt partly the same in oblivion, but i got something out of the exploration and character building). Haven't played FO4 at all.
FrankenGraphics wrote:
Is skyrim any different than FO3, FO:NV?
Worse. I'd easily rate them, from greatest to least. FO3, FO:NV, Skyrim. FO3 is the only one of the three I beat; FO;NV felt like the exact same thing except more poorly designed, which is why I never bothered beating it after I beat FO3.
FrankenGraphics wrote:
Haven't played FO4 at all.
Neither have I, but from what I've heard, I doubt I'm missing much.
SquareSoft was AWESOME - and the music of Chrono Trigger is DAMN FINE. SquareEnix/Edios is a total stuff up... although Rise of the Tomb Raider is my game of the decade.
Diablo 3 ROS is AMAZING, and better than D2 !
Marvel is Crap but the Thor Movies are top notch fun
I mean just look at the latest trailer...
PS4? Sold well but who actually uses one?
I request Pumpkin Spice for GOD Tier.. maybe Oreos as well?
Next time you see somebody say "ain't nothing bigger than Texas, Texas is huge", tell them Texas is Tiny... I'm in the 5th largest state in my Country and Texas is 2/3 the size of it... tiny..
I think Bioware should be on the list somewhere.
Admittedly, D2 has grown stale. Most builds/strategies come down to one active skill, items provide mana, click a zillion times without involvement to grind to no particular purpose. Or maybe, just maybe there's some small, rare adaptation you might need to prepare for certain events.
It is worth pointing out that D3 and D3 ROS are very different games, so people who played D3 and were not that happy ( my self included, it was good but not amazing ) probably didn't give ROS the time of day either. With ROS they fixed a lot of things. It also completely changes as you play. Lvl0-50 is played one way, 50-70 another Torment 1-10 another then Seasons play another way. So if you like D2 you will like Torment 1-10 mode more than Lvl 0-50 mode etc That being said Path of Exile seems to be the new D2.
Super Mario Maker
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Pretty much every other Wii U game I've played (I'd include Splatoon here but I don't like to diss things I haven't actually tried)
The Wii U itself (if the gamepad dies, the console is useless, and you can't even rescue your save data - guess what happened to mine on day two)
Any other console/program that constantly bugs you for an internet connection you don't have so it can "update"
Software "updates" by any commercial vendor (anyone who thinks changing their UI once a week is a good idea should be forced to work as tech support in a retirement village)
Software companies in general
I actually like Minecraft. Or at least I did until it got too big; the last time I really played it for fun was 1.5. Kind of bummed I never published my AI mod but hey.
Oziphantom wrote:
I request Pumpkin Spice for GOD Tier
As bad as pumpkin spice is, I just can't accept putting it in the same tier as Apple.
Oziphantom wrote:
maybe Oreos as well
WTF? Oreos are great! We can't keep them at the house because I'd eat out the whole package in one sitting...
Oziphantom wrote:
I think Bioware should be on the list somewhere.
Sure.
Rahsennor wrote:
Super Mario Maker
Absolutely.
Rahsennor wrote:
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
I've never played it, but I'm tempted to make a D Tier and put The Legend of Zelda as a whole there. They're good games, but I don't think they're anywhere near the best games ever made like many people think.
Rahsennor wrote:
Any other console/program that constantly bugs you for an internet connection you don't have so it can "update"
Although terrible, I wouldn't consider it to be overrated because nobody has ever praised it.
Rahsennor wrote:
Software companies in general
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, ...?
Rahsennor wrote:
Splatoon
Dude!
Admittedly, I thought it was going to be a really bad game until I played it at a friends house and tried Ranked Battle. Christ, people were so bad at the game that I killed ("splatted") 25 people and only died twice in five minutes. It puts you against other players of your skill level, and since he just got the game when I first played it, he was still at the bottom. You move slow as ass in the game though; for the most part, (counting 3 mini powerups as 1), I have 4 run speed power ups and 2 swim speed power ups and almost never carry anything that isn't a standard SMG type weapon (which are very clearly the best type of weapon in the game). I actually never play the standard Turf War mode; it gets very boring very quick.
Yeah though, I would put ARMS on the list, but I've never actually played it, so...
Half-Life series
Very well done, but mostly generic first person shooter with a mildly progressing plotline somehow considered the second coming of Jesus in videogame form. Wtf?
Never played Half-Life, but having watched gameplay footage, I asked myself, "uh, is there something I'm missing here?"
Remember when it came out - in 1998, PC gamers were generally playing FPSes with no real storyline, minimal scripted events, and rigid level divisions. Half-Life was a totally seamless, immersive roller coaster ride unlike anything else on the market at the time. It seems kinda underwhelming now because immediately everyone was ripping it off, to the point that its innovations are like water to fish - they're so ubiquitous that you don't even notice them anymore, and it just seems kinda average.
Now Half-Life 2? That's overrated (and always has been).
Maybe not as high-tier as before, but basically any mmo and mmorpgs in general? ugh.
Espozo wrote:
Oziphantom wrote:
maybe Oreos as well
WTF? Oreos are great! We can't keep them at the house because I'd eat out the whole package in one sitting...
Some Americans
won't touch Oreo cookies anymore now that Mondelez (Nabisco's new name) has moved production from USA to Mexico. Fans of buying American have switched to
Hydrox, the cookie that Oreo originally copied, available once again at Kroger and Amazon.
Espozo wrote:
Rahsennor wrote:
Any other console/program that constantly bugs you for an internet connection you don't have so it can "update"
Although terrible, I wouldn't consider it to be overrated because nobody has ever praised it.
People haven't praised the bugging itself but have praised consoles that include the bugging despite the bugging.
Espozo wrote:
Rahsennor wrote:
Software companies in general
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, ...?
Or more generally, anyone who publishes
software without source code and expects end users to trust that it lacks harmful anti-features.
Sumez wrote:
Very well done, but mostly generic first person shooter with a mildly progressing plotline somehow considered the second coming of Jesus in videogame form.
I'm agreeing with adam_smasher here.
Half-Life did to PC first-person shooters what
GoldenEye 007 did to console first-person shooters: break them out of the
"Robotron 2084 from first-person view" mold that
Doom codified.
adam_smasher wrote:
It seems kinda underwhelming now because immediately everyone was ripping it off, to the point that its innovations are like water to fish
And
Seinfeld seems unfunny nowadays for the same reason.
adam_smasher wrote:
minimal scripted events
Ah, those were the days! If I wanted scripted stuff I'd go watch a movie or something.
Seinfeld to the god tier, seriously some of the most boring shit ever made.
Same goes for oreos, yuck, don't you have Maryland Cookies(UK brand) in the states?
Espozo wrote:
Texas
(you have to live here to know)
US Civil War General Sherdian wrote:
“If I owned Texas and Hell, I’d rent out Texas and live in Hell.”
Quote:
Pumpkin spice
I swear that, this past october, Trader Joe's took it as a challenge/joke to add it to as many things as possible.
lidnariq wrote:
Espozo wrote:
Texas
(you have to live here to know)
US Civil War General Sherdian wrote:
“If I owned Texas and Hell, I’d rent out Texas and live in Hell.”
Because
Hell was Union and Texas was Confederate, I take it.
tepples wrote:
Sumez wrote:
Very well done, but mostly generic first person shooter with a mildly progressing plotline somehow considered the second coming of Jesus in videogame form.
I'm agreeing with adam_smasher here.
Half-Life did to PC first-person shooters what
GoldenEye 007 did to console first-person shooters: break them out of the
"Robotron 2084 from first-person view" mold that
Doom codified.
But as you said yourself, Goldeneye already did that. And before that, System Shock took the genre to even more ambitious extends. Half-Life was definitely one of the better FPS games of its time, but it did absolutely nothing new. I'm not saying it's overrated from a modern perspective, I thought the same thing when it came out, and having had nearly 20 years to think about it since (damn, time moves fast), over which I have replayed it at least a couple of times, I still haven't been able to "get it". I just don't see what makes the game special.
The condescending side of me wants to think it has something to about its intended target group not having much of an insight into video games aside from a limited range of PC games in specific genres, but to be honest I've seen people of all kinds worshipping that game, I just don't see where it's coming from.
Actually, thinking about it, I think the biggest problem I had with Half-Life was that I felt that Jedi Knight did everything Half-Life did way better, and never got anywhere close to the same amount of praise. Half-Life was FAR from the first game taking the genre away from "first person Robotron" (which is a really misleading way to put it)
The ironic thing about Goldeneye was that it was made by Rare who are usually known for good graphics, even though Goldeneye looked bad for an N64 game.
Espozo wrote:
FO3 is the only one of the three I beat; FO;NV felt like the exact same thing except more poorly designed, which is why I never bothered beating it after I beat FO3.
Poorly designed as in buggy or bad game design? The former is undeniable, but NV is so much better than 3 in terms of pretty much everything else. Better story line that isn't a straight path all the way, more stuff to do, better shooting (iron sights is key), better companion system, better cap balance (I easily carried around at least 50 stimpaks late in FO3, it was almost too easy and that wasn't even on easy mode), the C in SPECIAL has slightly more use since the percentages are gone, skill checks actually exist...
Perfect game? No. Overrated? No. Worse than FO3? Absolutely not.
Like some examples here that people claimed as having invented/revolutionised a lot of things which actually didn't:
The Bio Hazard series.
They offered nothing new compared to the Alone in the Dark series. Well IMO the BH games (the 1st one at least) ripped off AITD very blatantly. The problem was that the AITD games (well, the original trilogy at least) themselves weren't really bad games in comparison to make the BH games stand out as codifiers. The huge popularity of the BH games might be due to having released primarily for the Playstation platform which gave them textured characters that might look much better to some people. That said, I didn't say the BH games were bad themselves and I found them enjoyable, just that they're really overrated, which made them fit into this list very well.
I'm probably not the target group for the Biohazard games, and I'm not a big fan myself, but I can easily tell that they are vastly better than Alone in the Dark, even if they reused almost every concept from it. I don't know if they are overrated exactly. I know a lot of people are big fans, but they also received a lot of criticism, especially with the whole limited use of save points, etc.
Since Apple is God Tier, How about adding Washington AND Oregon states to the list?
Sumez wrote:
tepples wrote:
Sumez wrote:
Very well done, but mostly generic first person shooter with a mildly progressing plotline somehow considered the second coming of Jesus in videogame form.
I'm agreeing with adam_smasher here.
Half-Life did to PC first-person shooters what
GoldenEye 007 did to console first-person shooters: break them out of the
"Robotron 2084 from first-person view" mold that
Doom codified.
But as you said yourself, Goldeneye already did that. And before that, System Shock took the genre to even more ambitious extends. Half-Life was definitely one of the better FPS games of its time, but it did absolutely nothing new. I'm not saying it's overrated from a modern perspective, I thought the same thing when it came out, and having had nearly 20 years to think about it since (damn, time moves fast), over which I have replayed it at least a couple of times, I still haven't been able to "get it". I just don't see what makes the game special.
The condescending side of me wants to think it has something to about its intended target group not having much of an insight into video games aside from a limited range of PC games in specific genres, but to be honest I've seen people of all kinds worshipping that game, I just don't see where it's coming from.
Actually, thinking about it, I think the biggest problem I had with Half-Life was that I felt that Jedi Knight did everything Half-Life did way better, and never got anywhere close to the same amount of praise. Half-Life was FAR from the first game taking the genre away from "first person Robotron" (which is a really misleading way to put it)
It's not like there weren't first-person games more sophisticated than Doom before Half-Life came along. But Half-Life was unique for being a fully seamless, immersive,
fluid experience. I used the word "roller coaster" and stand by it: around every corner there's a new, unique scenario or scripted event escalating things, and yet it all just feels part of a real, dynamic world. There are no cutscenes, but the game still manages to build a constantly escalating, ever-changing narrative. There were no key hunts: the puzzles in Half-Life rarely feel like puzzles - they're just natural consequences of interacting with the environment. It's a linear game, but even as it railroads you along, you never quite feel railroaded along: there's a real understanding of player psychology going on that keeps boundaries from feeling artificial.
Goldeneye added mission objectives and the very occasional cutscene or scripted event but it was still basically a game about running around discrete levels, shooting anonymous baddies, and reaching the exit.
System Shock and tons of others (the Marathon games, Hexen, and Realms of the Haunting off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's more) come closer to what Half-Life did, but none of them have anywhere close to the sense of dynamism that Half-Life had. They're also all much worse as pure FPS experiences than Half-Life, which managed to be both a great action game as well as a great immersive experience.
Admittedly - I've never played Jedi Knight. I do remember it getting quite a bit of praise at the time, though, and
Wikipedia agrees with me.
Would you recommend half-life to someone who's never played it today? Not a rhetorical question.
And what are the pros and cons of old GoldSrc-based
Half-Life,
Half-Life: Source, and
the Black Mesa remake?
FrankenGraphics wrote:
Would you recommend half-life to someone who's never played it today? Not a rhetorical question.
I think so! If you can stomach games from that era, anyway. It's aged, but compared to something like Goldeneye or Tomb Raider it's aged gracefully I think.
tepples wrote:
And what are the pros and cons of old GoldSrc-based Half-Life, Half-Life: Source, and the Black Mesa remake?
I've never played Black Mesa. The Source version is basically the same as the original as far as I remember? The internet tells me there are some very minor graphics improvements and more realistic physics and that fans go back and forth on the relative merits, but also "
the differences are relatively negligible and the stuff that's noticeable just feels a little out of place", which sounds correct on principle.
Christ, I had a long reply typed, but I forgot to copy it before I pressed submit and I was logged out. Anyway, I'm updating the list, although I would like to know how Goldeneye is "outdated".
Good games don't age poorly.
At least not objectively spoken.
If a game "isn't as good today as when it came out", it was probably never that good to begin with, and you were blinded by either hype or standards based on technology, etc.
That said, I think both Goldeneye and Half-Life are absolutely as good today as when they came out, for better or worse. Like I said, I believe HL is absurdly overrated, but it's still a good game that holds up well.
adam_smasher wrote:
Admittedly - I've never played Jedi Knight. I do remember it getting quite a bit of praise at the time, though, and
Wikipedia agrees with me.
Oh it got praise, just not a lot of attention.
I definitely recommend playing it if you can! It's probably "not aged well" (
), but I still think it's a great game. What stands out about the game is the absolutely MASSIVE stages, which are still huge by today's standards. Although the game is based on fairly linear progression through the same set of stages, you rarely feel like you are guided through them on rails. Instead every area is designed in a way that makes it feel more like actual genuine Star Wars locales with a purpose to every nook and cranny, instead of abstract game design. But it manages to implement it in way that makes it a metagame in itself just to find your way through it, and on many occasions getting where you need to go reminds me of the puzzles in a Zelda dungeon. A good example is a big hangar where you need to get into a locked room, and hiding inside the "teeth" of a huge security gate as it closes allows you to get into the ventilation channels.
Oh man, I'm going off-topic, sorry.
As for Minecraft, unless you have kids, as an adult it may not be that interesting except if you are a fan of lego or something similar. It's basically virtual legos.
The kids love that. There is no real objective per se, you just create your story. They will start and build their hideout, create some crops to be self sufficient (or because they like farming), take care of animals (if you want to, you don't have to) go mine some ore etc.
If you play alone as an adult it can gets quite old very fast but with the kids it just a virtual environment where we just interact with each other inside. And if you don't like survival you can go in creative mode and have all the blocks to built whatever you want.
So the audience is very specific. Overrated? Maybe, but it has an audience which is now mostly kids. I prefer them playing that than Dragon's crown
Very good points on minecraft. It's a great show and tell game. It provides means for narratives and storytelling, "i made this!" moments and interpersonal interaction, but as a single player game, you miss out on all that.
In the museum "business", there was a period when exhib producers were like "aaand throw minecraft into the mix, kids love that". Indeed, kids did love that, but unless you'd hire someone to write a hack (doesn't happen), it gets pretty limiting. So in that field of work, i'd argue minecraft is overrated as the go-to solution to attract younger visitors/participants.
Early 3D graphics, just like early 2D graphics, aged very poorly. Most N64 games look like crap, but we were so amazed at the fact that they were in 3D that we didn't notice it.
As for the gameplay, I believe that a game that's fun to play will always be fun to play, regardless of how old it gets, which is why I never understood why people often got rid of their old game consoles whenever they got a new one.
One issue is that 3D modelling skills weren't always what they are now. Mario in Super Mario 64 DS has fewer polygons than in the original, but he looks way better... part of it is the use of mesh deformation rather than segmenting, which saves a bunch of polygons on the body, but the model is also much less clunky looking artistically...
tokumaru wrote:
Most N64 games look like crap, but we were so amazed at the fact that they were in 3D that we didn't notice it.
The N64's visuals are bad, but they're clean. The original PlayStation's visuals bothered me when I was younger and still bother me now, with all the jitteriness and severely distorted textures in many games. Probably just my inner fanboy speaking, but I feel you could make the case that the N64-look (Vaseline included) could still pass today if it were branded as an "art style", while the PlayStation, without any upgrades, could not.
I don't know if you were including this under visuals, but what has aged much more poorly, with Goldeneye in particular, is the framerate. However, I still don't think it's to the point of being really bothersome until there are several explosions (as there often are, with how combustible everything is in the game), which at that point the framerate is sub 15fps.
I don't actually own Perfect Dark, but ironically, it looks like it has aged even worse. I've seen gameplay of it online, and I guess instead of trying to optimize their existing graphics engine and keeping the graphical fidelity about the same, Rare did nothing but add new features to the existing engine, making the framerate even lower, as if it weren't already Goldeneye's biggest problem. Although not necessarily representative of actual gameplay, this is some of the worst lag I've ever seen in a video game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQvgBb0F2ec I love how the game can't handle 50, 20 polygon mines in a nearly empty area without the framerate dropping...
Banshaku wrote:
It's basically virtual legos.
Except Legos are 1000x better?
@93143 What is the difference between deformation and segmenting, whatever that is?
Segmenting:
https://youtu.be/A2gXyEyy_2U?t=85Deformation (or so I assume; it's not actually shown):
https://youtu.be/A2gXyEyy_2U?t=518
tokumaru wrote:
Early 3D graphics, just like early 2D graphics, aged very poorly. Most N64 games look like crap, but we were so amazed at the fact that they were in 3D that we didn't notice it.
As for the gameplay, I believe that a game that's fun to play will always be fun to play, regardless of how old it gets, which is why I never understood why people often got rid of their old game consoles whenever they got a new one.
I think it's fine to claim that graphics "aged poorly" for rhetorical purposes, purpose, cause I get what you mean.
But early 3D graphics ALWAYS looked like crap unless the developers were able to stylize their graphics in a way that would make the technical limitations work as less of an obstacle (think Wind Waker). That was REALLY rare that early, though, and the first example I can think of with a 3D game that I genuinely though looked good despite the polygon count was American McGee's Alice, but there were probably a few others around the same time.
No graphics automatically turned into crap over time. Sure, some people were amazed simply because they saw 3D graphics, but I know for a fact that myself and a lot of other people didn't understand the affection to it, and were really disappointed in everyone suddenly making butt ugly games when we finally got the technology to start making really gorgeous 2D games.
"Does something look good" is always a pretty subjective concept, so you can't really argue either way, but whenever I hear someone say "this or that aged poorly", I always read it as "I was wrong about something, but now I know better".
Quote:
American McGee's Alice
This game really looked gorgeous. I still think it does. But i'd say quake looked great and still looks great, too. When higher resolutions became commonplace, it still held up despite the low polygon count. Not Alice tier-good looking, but still good.
I think Quake holds up, even if I don't think it looks good. It manages to convey a lot of atmosphere though, in spite of the graphics. It did so back then, and it still does that very well today. It kind of depends on the stages though.
It feels like a game that doesn't -need- to look any better. Like Space Invaders.
Sumez wrote:
No graphics automatically turned into crap over time. Sure, some people were amazed simply because they saw 3D graphics, but I know for a fact that myself and a lot of other people didn't understand the affection to it, and were really disappointed in everyone suddenly making butt ugly games when we finally got the technology to start making really gorgeous 2D games.
I've got to agree here. Coming from beautiful games like Donkey Kong Country to the ugly mess that was the N64 was discouraging. That combined with the fact that 3d was new enough that game designers hadn't figured out what worked well meant that we had a whole generation of ugly and terrible 3d games.
I agree 100% that graphics don't magically turn bad, so my use of the expression "aged poorly" might not have been adequate here. My point was, most 3D graphics looked like crap back then, but we were still amazed by them, for the most part. I know I was, even though I didn't immediately make the jump to 3D (the Genesis was my newest console until 2001, when I bought a 2nd hand Dreamcast).
What bothers me the most about early 3D graphics nowadays is not the low polygon count, but the movement of the camera and game characters. Movement often feels stiff, linearly interpolated, completely lifeless. And there's also the occasional jerkiness. Low polygon models can have a lot of charm when done right, but a lot of old games had terrible models, unfortunately.
I also agree that the N64, unlike the PlayStation, can still pull off decent 3D graphics for today's standards, as long as they are stylized instead of realistic.
I've always wanted to know what kind of visuals you could get for these systems if you just made the game far less ambitious. It's like how I think Super Monkey Ball is easily one of the best looking GameCube games, not that it has the highest overall poly count, but because it has the highest polycount per object because there's barely anything onscreen.
On the other end of the scale,
Katamari Damacy for PlayStation 2 uses stylized low-poly meshes that would be at home on the PS1 but puts a crapload of them on the screen at once.
But then you can find a
reviewer who calls Katamari overrated.
tepples wrote:
I've got to agree. Making a game creative and weird doesn't automatically make it
fun, which this game illustrates quite well.
gauauu wrote:
I've got to agree.
I've never played it, but watching gameplay, I wasn't impressed.
gauauu wrote:
Making a game creative and weird doesn't automatically make it fun, which this game illustrates quite well.
I haven't even played the demo for this, but I'm just going to drop this here:
Yeah though, take off Super Smash Bros Melee from that list, and I agree wholeheartedly.
Katamari's great. I need to stop reading this thread
Espozo, you've admitted to almost never trying to play an RPG, and yet RPGs in general are high on your overrated list. Don't knock it 'till you try it.
Is the
rocket launcher likewise overrated?
nicklausw wrote:
Espozo, you've admitted to almost never trying to play an RPG, and yet RPGs in general are high on your overrated list. Don't knock it 'till you try it.
I played Secret of Mana for 20 minutes in an emulator, and it was the most boring experience of my life. The only RPG game I ever completed was Pokemon Red which is obviously just a grindfest, but at least it's not trying to be a "cinematic experience".
I forgot that people make this distinction now, but when I say "RPG", I mean JRPG.
And tepples, we all saw that joke coming from a mile away...
tokumaru wrote:
Movement often feels stiff, linearly interpolated, completely lifeless.
I feel like that's one thing Super Mario 64 did right, at least with Mario himself. Some of the NPCs have fairly primitive animations, but Mario is another matter.
It's weird that barring glitches, Mario's animation and environmental interaction in that game is so much more solid and realistic than in a lot of modern games, where, for example, if you run into a wall you either just stop or (even worse) stay in the running animation while moving slowly along the wall with the lateral component of your "running" velocity vector. You try that in Super Mario 64 and you bash your face on the wall and fall backwards. Or, if you
walk into the wall, you flatten yourself against it and shuffle along it. It also helps that the collision mesh seems to be identical to the visible geometry mesh, at least for level geometry (enemies and some objects are probably simplified).
Sure, the movement feels a bit stiff and heavy, but so did the original Super Mario Bros. Looking at Sunshine and Galaxy, it seems like the progression from SMB to Doki Doki Panic and SMB3 was kinda repeated in 3D...
93143 wrote:
I feel like that's one thing Super Mario 64 did right, at least with Mario himself. Some of the NPCs have fairly primitive animations, but Mario is another matter.
That game did a lot of things right. The stylized cartoony look worked really well with the N64's limitations, and the level design was great. As much as I enjoy bashing the early 3d graphics of the N64, I really can't include Mario 64 in that bashing.
93143 wrote:
Sure, the movement feels a bit stiff and heavy, but so did the original Super Mario Bros.
Uh wait what....
Sure you aren't thinking of just plain Mario Bros.?
Espozo wrote:
The only RPG game I ever completed was Pokemon Red which is obviously just a grindfest, but at least it's not trying to be a "cinematic experience".
Now
there's one for a high tier, though.... If Secret of Mana is a little overrated, Pokemon is infinitely so.
Sumez wrote:
93143 wrote:
Sure, the movement feels a bit stiff and heavy, but so did the original Super Mario Bros.
Uh wait what....
Sure you aren't thinking of just plain Mario Bros.?
I'm sure. SMB isn't
bad, exactly, but you're still fighting the controls a bit. SMB3 crushes it.
I think we must have played two very different SMBs.
I know you're in PAL territory, but surely the comparison with Super Mario Bros. 3 still holds?
Or is your opinion of Super Mario 64's gamefeel so low that you consider it an insult to SMB to compare them?
I don't have a wide experience base in terms of classic platformers. I mostly only played top-tier games, and not all of those. I'm not saying either SMB or SM64 had bad controls. I'm just saying that to me it seems like there was an element of "this is the first time we've tried this" in both of them, that got polished out in later games.
Am I the only one who felt F-Zero left more to be desired? It looked like a showcase on how fast the SNES could be, nothing more. (I guess that's what I get for playing it for the first time 15 years after its release.)
Sumez wrote:
I think we must have played two very different SMBs.
Honestly, after trying to replicate the SMB physics for a game engine, I have to agree that it feels a bit stiff. So I started to opt for SMB3 physics instead.
tokumaru wrote:
I also agree that the N64, unlike the PlayStation, can still pull off decent 3D graphics for today's standards, as long as they are stylized instead of realistic.
I don't know what it is about
Bomberman 64, but every time I come back to it and see the intro, I'm always fascinated about how aesthetically-pleasing it all looks to this day.
Sumez wrote:
Good games don't age poorly.
At least not objectively spoken.
I've never had a PlayStation growing up, but I do now and started playing Metal Gear Solid for the first time (I've seen friends play it back in the '90s), and I absolutely loved it despite its flaws (except one excruciatingly annoying flaw during boss battles I'm sure everyone remembers). I loved this game so much I decided to try to beat it on Extreme. Hell, I'm gonna play some 'a that right now.
I can't concur that graphics of the PSX/N64 era games have aged badly. Some early games, like
Crash Bandicoot (1996), already had really solid visual styles, IMO. There are certainly games which seemed to have OK graphics back in the day, but are not that great on further examination (
NHL 98 comes to mind from personal experience), but I don't think it's fair to make this into a general rule.
Jedi QuestMaster wrote:
I've never had a PlayStation growing up, but I do now and started playing Metal Gear Solid for the first time (I've seen friends play it back in the '90s), and I absolutely loved it despite its flaws (except one excruciatingly annoying flaw during boss battles I'm sure everyone remembers).
What flaw was that?
I still think NHL 98 looks good (if you can overlook the "audience"). Anything happening on the ice looks good, at least.
But i'm leaning towards accepting that graphics can age poorly. I mean, they are what they are, and they don't change materially. That goes without saying. But our standards change. If the standard ever where "wow it's so immersive because it's got 3d and you can change perspective and the animation is smooth compared to choppy sprites", that puts even gross graphics in a forgiving light.
But at the time, when friends in school got either ps or n64, i stuck to what i had (nes and gameboy) and moved to pc for the few 3d experiences i enjoyed. I returned to consoles for RE4 and metroid prime, but only after they got cheap in store. I Played Metal Gear Solid for the first time in 2008 maybe, and thought it was pretty ok visually for what it was.
Even though I consider myself a retro gamer, I think retro games are largely overrated, but there is still potential in them, we just need more new retro games.
thefox wrote:
Jedi QuestMaster wrote:
I've never had a PlayStation growing up, but I do now and started playing Metal Gear Solid for the first time (I've seen friends play it back in the '90s), and I absolutely loved it despite its flaws (except one excruciatingly annoying flaw during boss battles I'm sure everyone remembers).
What flaw was that?
Whenever a in-game dialog event is triggered, I can't change weapons. This is especially apparent during the Hind battle after successfully launching a stinger missile at Liquid and not de-equiping the stinger launcher in time. I then have to listen to Liquid's rant while unable to move because I'm still aiming with the stinger.
Has that ever happened to you?
Jedi QuestMaster wrote:
thefox wrote:
Jedi QuestMaster wrote:
I've never had a PlayStation growing up, but I do now and started playing Metal Gear Solid for the first time (I've seen friends play it back in the '90s), and I absolutely loved it despite its flaws (except one excruciatingly annoying flaw during boss battles I'm sure everyone remembers).
What flaw was that?
Whenever a in-game dialog event is triggered, I can't change weapons. This is especially apparent during the Hind battle after successfully launching a stinger missile at Liquid and not de-equiping the stinger launcher in time. I then have to listen to Liquid's rant while unable to move because I'm still aiming with the stinger.
Has that ever happened to you?
I can't say that it has. It has been a long time since I played the game though, so could be just that I don't remember it. Or maybe they patched the problem in later revisions (the game got released in Europe 4-5 months later than in the states).
93143 wrote:
Sumez wrote:
93143 wrote:
Sure, the movement feels a bit stiff and heavy, but so did the original Super Mario Bros.
Uh wait what....
Sure you aren't thinking of just plain Mario Bros.?
I'm sure. SMB isn't
bad, exactly, but you're still fighting the controls a bit. SMB3 crushes it.
SMB3 can change directions in the middle of a jump faster.
93143 wrote:
Or is your opinion of Super Mario 64's gamefeel so low that you consider it an insult to SMB to compare them?
I don't have a wide experience base in terms of classic platformers. I mostly only played top-tier games, and not all of those. I'm not saying either SMB or SM64 had bad controls. I'm just saying that to me it seems like there was an element of "this is the first time we've tried this" in both of them, that got polished out in later games.
I'm not sure where SM64 got into the picture, but unlike SMB it definitely has the "it's the first time we're doing this" feel, even if I think it's good enough to not require any major alterations.
Jedi QuestMaster wrote:
Honestly, after trying to replicate the SMB physics for a game engine, I have to agree that it feels a bit stiff. So I started to opt for SMB3 physics instead.
I'm really not sure I understand what your issues with SMB is. I don't think I can think of any other platformers where I feel like I'm as much in control as in the first SMB, even more so than SMB3 though the difference between them is merely a question of habit (SMB3 has that "skip" betwen running at P speed or not, that's a little awkward, but it works perfectly for wha they wanted)
In SMB I can run at full speed, immediately adjust my inertia, stop on a dime at any time, and easily handle everything the game throws at me. It is, in fact, amazing how well they got it for a "first attempt" (if stuff like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. doesn't count).
That said, I'm certain there's some reason you have your opinions, so there's probably some thing you could argue could have been better, but "stiff" is definitely not the word you are looking for. Mario is anything but.
Sumez wrote:
93143 wrote:
I'm really not sure I understand what your issues with SMB is. I don't think I can think of any other platformers where I feel like I'm as much in control as in the first SMB, even more so than SMB3 though the difference between them is merely a question of habit (SMB3 has that "skip" betwen running at P speed or not, that's a little awkward, but it works perfectly for wha they wanted)
In SMB I can run at full speed, immediately adjust my inertia, stop on a dime at any time, and easily handle everything the game throws at me. It is, in fact, amazing how well they got it for a "first attempt" (if stuff like Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. doesn't count).
That said, I'm certain there's some reason you have your opinions, so there's probably some thing you could argue could have been better, but "stiff" is definitely not the word you are looking for. Mario is anything but.
First go play SMB,
then play SMB3,
then go play SMB again,
then play SMB2(U) as Mario,
then hook up your SNES and play SMW,
then find your Game Boy and fire up SML2,
make sure you still have plenty of battery life, then put in SML1...
wait, where was I going with this?
Hold up, I need to go play Wario Land now...
Oh I've played all of those games more than enough times
Sumez wrote:
I'm not sure where SM64 got into the picture
That was the whole point of the post that started this discussion. SMB was just an analogy.
SMB is a bit funny with how it handles acceleration and jumping. As psycopathicteen said, it's harder to steer in mid-air, but it's also harder to judge when you're going fast enough to do a running jump rather than just a pathetic standing hop that'll land you right in the middle of the hole you're trying to clear - the transition seems to be fairly abrupt. Also the jump's arc is a bit bullet-timey at the top.
And before you suggest that I need to git gud, I've been playing SMB for 30 years. I've beaten SMB2/TLL repeatedly. I'm not the problem.
SMB3 just feels way more free and natural to me.
...
Again, I'm not saying SMB is bad. I could criticize (say) Donkey Kong Country's loose, thin gamefeel at least as easily, and that was nearly a decade later (plus they didn't fix it in the sequels). I'm sure I could easily track down and play a game that would make Super Mario Bros. feel like a drink of cool water in the desert. But why would I want to?
93143 wrote:
SMB is a bit funny with how it handles acceleration and jumping. As psycopathicteen said, it's harder to steer in mid-air, but it's also harder to judge when you're going fast enough to do a running jump rather than just a pathetic standing hop that'll land you right in the middle of the hole you're trying to clear - the transition seems to be fairly abrupt.
Once again, it really feels like you're talking about a completely different game. SMB is not like this at all.
Sumez is the only person I've heard say SMB feels better than SMB3. The jump arc is very weird; you just sort of float for a second and then drop like an anvil.
I never claimed it feels "better" than SMB3. They are just different, not necessarily better or worse. I can't think of anything I'd do to SMB1's controls to "improve" them.
I've heard people criticize it for being too floaty, which I also disagree strongly with, but at least I can understand where they are coming from. Calling it "stiff" is the exact opposite and makes no sense.
Wait. According to
this, the physics in SMB3 are different in PAL. Could it be that, combined with a ton of practice with SMB so that muscle memory compensates for any physics shortcomings?
Sumez wrote:
I've heard people criticize it for being too floaty [...] Calling it "stiff" is the exact opposite and makes no sense.
Okay, so at least part of this is semantic. "Floaty" and "stiff" are not opposites in my book, and could both fairly be used to describe SMB. But in moderation, of course, as there's nothing
horribly wrong with the controls.
Both SMB1 and 3 are different between PAL and NTSC because both were adjusted to compensate for the slower rate of vblanks. I've played both versions of both games though (as in, Jap and EU versions), and with my experience from the PAL versions, the NTSC ones felt perfectly natural. You only really notice the difference when comparing them side by side.