Remove ads

What are controversial gaming opinions you have?

Terrabrand said:
Yeah doom is like waaaaaaaaaaaay better than half life, no contest.

Doom is great even compared to the best shooters I have ever seen, half life is mediocre at best even 'for its time'. I guess that's (still) my controversial opinion of the day.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Part of me wants to argue that Half Life isn't mediocre, because I do still quite enjoy the game. But then I think about acts like On a Rail, or all of Xen and the final boss, and honestly hitscan enemies in general are a pain to deal with in an FPS based around managing your health and armor resources instead of regenerating shields or health or whatnot like more modern FPS games go for. Still don't know if I'd call it mediocre, but the original Doom is honestly just a more solid experience as a complete package rather than the ups and downs you have to deal with in Half Life.
 
Half Life overall tried new things, and it fails in some but also succeeds in many. The original HL alongside Corporal Shepherd's Worst Day Ever is something I think every every FPS buff should play.
 
Here's my unpopular opinion, Dark Souls isn't a Metroidvania at all. A key component of that genre is that your character gains new capabilities which unlock previously inaccessible areas of the map. To my knowledge Dark Souls only locks areas off with keys, switches and boss fights. You never gain a double jump or ball mode or shadow dash that lets you into previously inaccessible areas. (Admission I've only ever gotten through like 3/4ths of DS because I suck at it).
 
cB557 said:
I don't think I'd call Cave Story a metroidvania.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Out of curiosity, why not? From playing through it, I'd consider it to fit the designation fairly well -- closer in general design to the earlier (pre-SotN, since it's being discussed) castlevanias or metroids, but still pretty clearly drawing from the whole explore-y platformer shtick. Not as much rpg element as later metroidvanias tend to roll with, but the general style doesn't actually need that, really.

E: Though the concept of dark souls stuff being a metroidvania is complete news to me. Never even occurred to me someone would try to weld 3D to the concept to begin with. I can sorta' see how someone could do it, but metroidvanias have, like, always meant 2D and 2D only to me. If it's 3D it's just an adventure game :V

That said, opening up new movement methods or whatever isn't really a pre-req for metroidvania stuff, even if it's common. Iirc several of the earlier castlevanias didn't, and you occasionally get smaller or more pared down ones that have full movement capability right from the start. The genre's always been way more about the exploration and whatnot than exactly how you go about it.
 
Last edited:
king208 said:
Here's my unpopular opinion, Dark Souls isn't a Metroidvania at all. A key component of that genre is that your character gains new capabilities which unlock previously inaccessible areas of the map. To my knowledge Dark Souls only locks areas off with keys, switches and boss fights. You never gain a double jump or ball mode or shadow dash that lets you into previously inaccessible areas. (Admission I've only ever gotten through like 3/4ths of DS because I suck at it).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'd say that while Dark Souls takes inspiration from metroidvania structure, with interconnected worlds and you could call said keys behind bosses your "abilities" that unlock new areas to some degree, it really did end up creating its own genre of Soulslike games instead. It's especially true if you reach back to Demon Souls instead of Dark Souls, where the world is a series of linear stages you can clear in whichever order, but they aren't directly connected beyond each 1-1/2-1 going into 1-2/2-2 and so on. In fact the only "you'll have to go elsewhere first" gate in Demon Souls is that after you clear 1-2 and beat the Tower Knight, you can't progress to 1-3 and 1-4 until you've beaten one of the archdemons in at least one other world first.
 
Most Souls games are actually vastly freer than most Metroidvanias ? Metroidvanias are incredibly linear, you generally can't even choose to do a given area before or after another, nevermind ignore entire sections, which is something most Souls games do let you do; You can skip Depths in DS1, much of DS2 and a good bit of DS3, and those areas you do have to go through can, in part, be cleared in whatever order you like. This is not the case in most Metroidvanias at all, without geometry and pixel abuse and the like anyway.

They're still not 'non-linear' in the way something like Der Langrisser is, where there are distinct paths splitting off from each other and never meeting back up throughout, but that's actually pretty rare to begin with.
 
Last edited:
Frumple said:
Out of curiosity, why not? From playing through it, I'd consider it to fit the designation fairly well -- closer in general design to the earlier (pre-SotN, since it's being discussed) castlevanias or metroids, but still pretty clearly drawing from the whole explore-y platformer shtick. Not as much rpg element as later metroidvanias tend to roll with, but the general style doesn't actually need that, really.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It has some metroidvania trappings for flavor, but it's really a pretty linear game. Instead of crisscrossing the map exploring and progressing by using new abilities to reach new parts of old areas, the game points you to the level, you do the level, and then you never need to come back to that level again. Even the missile and health expansions can all be found the first time you do an area.
 
hghwolf said:
Most Souls games are actually vastly freer than most Metroidvanias ? Metroidvanias are incredibly linear, you generally can't even choose to do a given area before or after another, nevermind ignore entire sections, which is something most Souls games do let you do; You can skip Depths in DS1, much of DS2 and a good bit of DS3, and those areas you do have to go through can, in part, be cleared in whatever order you like.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I feel like this is a bit overstated, even if it's technically true. You can do this, but, especially for a first playthrough, it's not really a good idea, and I can't say it's the intended progression. Go about things in the wrong order and the difficulty will spike dramatically.

Which is fine, if you are a good player and know how to boost your AR at a low SL, but generally anyone who skips areas in DS games is either doing it by accident, or they've cleared those areas in a previous playthrough.
 
Althaea said:
I feel like this is a bit overstated, even if it's technically true. You can do this, but, especially for a first playthrough, it's not really a good idea, and I can't say it's the intended progression. Go about things in the wrong order and the difficulty will spike dramatically.

Which is fine, if you are a good player and know how to boost your AR at a low SL, but generally anyone who skips areas in DS games is either doing it by accident, or they've cleared those areas in a previous playthrough.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
The point being, this is something the games allow, not something you work against the games mechanics to do. Rather than being a unintended consequence of something like glitching past a hard barrier with a wall-zip or exploiting the mechanics in unintended ways to bomb-jump up a shaft, skipping the Depths is something the game actively gives you the literal key for if you ask it to, and skipping in DS2 and DS3 is a matter of overcoming soft barriers through good execution and/or grind.

You're going against a progression the game reccomends, not a progression the game tries to enforce, and Dark Souls isn't exactly shy about enforcing a certain progression if it wants to; impassable magic fog, impassable magic door, extremely passable magic floor.
 
DaS is more of a 3D translation of the genre, complete with all the quirks that brings. There's a good reason we call them Soulsbourne or Soulslike games instead of Metroidvanias as there are plenty of tweaks to the formula.
 
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver is a 3D Metroidvania.

You are given a big, open world, but are closed off from progressing to certain parts of it until you get specific abilities (passing through grates, swimming, climbing walls, etcetera)
 
Last edited:
The problem with both Half Life 1 and 2 is that they were partially tech demos showing off cool new ideas, and mechanical concepts and... not doing all that much with them.

In fact, for a lot of those elements nobody ever did. Developers aped the more grounded and realistic stylism, narrative design and surface premise elements like aliens, exploding labs and evil military grunts. But the more advanced stuff like the complex ai and reactive environments weren't really followed up on.

Meanwhile Doom slapped because it settled on a cluster of core, fully fleshed out mechanics and pushed them to their limits.
 
hghwolf said:
Metroidvanias are incredibly linear, you generally can't even choose to do a given area before or after another, nevermind ignore entire sections, which is something most Souls games do let you do; You can skip Depths in DS1, much of DS2 and a good bit of DS3, and those areas you do have to go through can, in part, be cleared in whatever order you like.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
hghwolf said:
The point being, this is something the games allow, not something you work against the games mechanics to do. Rather than being a unintended consequence of something like glitching past a hard barrier with a wall-zip or exploiting the mechanics in unintended ways to bomb-jump up a shaft, skipping the Depths is something the game actively gives you the literal key for if you ask it to, and skipping in DS2 and DS3 is a matter of overcoming soft barriers through good execution and/or grind.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Am I forgetting something, because I can't think of any areas in DS3 you can skip that aren't just missable optional areas. Smouldering Lake, Untended Graves and Archdragon Peak are actually hidden, and Consumed King's Garden is a single room with a boss at the end that is off to the side of the intended progression path.

DS2 is another story- that game has 31 bosses of whom only 8 are mandatory.
 
We should all move on from juvenile, puerile boasts such as "I fucked your mom last night" as an insult on online competitive games.

Because "I fucked your dad last night" is much funnier.
 
Last edited:
Honestly, even if Doom is the objectively better game for some, Half Life is more memorable for be because its more my aesthetic.
 
pedanterrific said:
Am I forgetting something, because I can't think of any areas in DS3 you can skip that aren't just missable optional areas. Smouldering Lake, Untended Graves and Archdragon Peak are actually hidden, and Consumed King's Garden is a single room with a boss at the end that is off to the side of the intended progression path.

DS2 is another story- that game has 31 bosses of whom only 8 are mandatory.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
DS3 is honestly SUPER linear in comparison to DS1 and DS2. While 1 guides you towards the Bell Gargoyles and then through the depths and blighttown, it's not too difficult to find the back entrance and head down to Quelaag early so you can do the bells in either order. Then, once you get the Lordsvessel from Anor Londo, you can tackle the four Lord Souls in just about any order you please, though hitting up New Londo for the Very Large Ember first is advisable, along with Lost Izalith before Tomb of Giants so you don't have to sacrifice your offhand for a lantern and can use the Sunlight Maggot instead. DS2 is also as you mentioned; there's 4 big soul bosses to take out, but you can skip them all or even just use a bonfire aesthetic to kill the Rotten a few times to hit the 1 million souls necessary to open the Shrine of Winter, though the game pretty much flattens out into a straight line from there outwards.

DS3 on the other hand, has a grand total of two choices - do you want to kill the Dancer super early to tackle the first half of Lothric before getting blockaded by a locked door where the key only magically appears once you've killed the other 3 lords of cinder, and do you want to go through the dungeons and take on Yhorm or do you want to finish up Irithyll and Aldrich first? Honestly, the linear nature of DS3 is probably why mods like Cinders add multiple warps that skip through chunks of the game so you can at least try and tackle things out of order, but I found that just ran into the issue of how heavily DS3 gates weapon levels through large titanite and titanite chunk availability depending on how far you are. At least you can actually buy chunks by endgame, instead of the nonsense that is farming them off of Darkwraiths in DS1 if you dare to want a full set of upgraded equipment.
 
McFluffles said:
DS3 is honestly SUPER linear in comparison to DS1 and DS2. While 1 guides you towards the Bell Gargoyles and then through the depths and blighttown, it's not too difficult to find the back entrance and head down to Quelaag early so you can do the bells in either order. Then, once you get the Lordsvessel from Anor Londo, you can tackle the four Lord Souls in just about any order you please, though hitting up New Londo for the Very Large Ember first is advisable, along with Lost Izalith before Tomb of Giants so you don't have to sacrifice your offhand for a lantern and can use the Sunlight Maggot instead. DS2 is also as you mentioned; there's 4 big soul bosses to take out, but you can skip them all or even just use a bonfire aesthetic to kill the Rotten a few times to hit the 1 million souls necessary to open the Shrine of Winter, though the game pretty much flattens out into a straight line from there outwards.

DS3 on the other hand, has a grand total of two choices - do you want to kill the Dancer super early to tackle the first half of Lothric before getting blockaded by a locked door where the key only magically appears once you've killed the other 3 lords of cinder, and do you want to go through the dungeons and take on Yhorm or do you want to finish up Irithyll and Aldrich first? Honestly, the linear nature of DS3 is probably why mods like Cinders add multiple warps that skip through chunks of the game so you can at least try and tackle things out of order, but I found that just ran into the issue of how heavily DS3 gates weapon levels through large titanite and titanite chunk availability depending on how far you are. At least you can actually buy chunks by endgame, instead of the nonsense that is farming them off of Darkwraiths in DS1 if you dare to want a full set of upgraded equipment.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You can do Four Kings as your third boss actually, no need to wait for the lordvessel since unlike the others they're not sealed by the great lord's power, just a fuckton of water.

You can buy chunks as well, slabs are the real problem in DaS1.
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top