Final Fantasy 6:
No real direction in the story. Only one memorable character, and he's only famous for being mindlessly evil for no good reason other than "magitek fried his brain!". The emphasis on being as powerful and evil as possible, at the cost of having no motive, development, tragic flaw or general humanity, makes it seem like he was designed by a 10-year-old. He kills indiscriminately, and we aren't made to feel any connection to the victims. What's that thing that Stalin said about the death of one being and tragedy, and the death of millions being just a statistic?
Interestingly, in Japan, where this game didn't have the benefit of being the last FF game before the series, and the genre, went mainstream, FF6 isn't seen as being remotely special in any way.
LoZ:OoT:
Never really got into it. Found the characters annoying, the game to be too open and the controls to be incredibly fiddly. The fact that it was on the N64, a console whose controller was definitely "love it or hate it" didn't really help with the fiddly controls, but I still found the game awkward to handle when using an emulator.
Also, that fucking owl!
Tomb Raider series:
Again, the controls always seemed fiddly, as if I was fighting to line her up at exactly the right angle and at exactly the right position, shuffling everywhere with tiny little steps. Maybe this problem no longer exists in the modern games, and maybe I could have got used to everything with a little practice, but I'm not the kind of person to risk wasting hours of time playing a game that I might enjoy eventually. First impressions count!
GTA 4:
Actually, my complaint about this is my complaint about the whole of this generation: too grimdark and not enough fun. It doesn't have that comically OTT physics and tongue-in-cheek humour that the older GTA games had. Rather, it feels like it was made for people who want to present the image of being dark and mature. Since I'm not a teenager, ostentatious displays of maturity don't really appeal to me.
The whole FPS genre:
No. Just no.
Why this genre has completely taken over on the HD consoles this generation is beyond me. Wait a minute; it isn't beyond me at all. It's because it's much easier to ensure a "passable" gameplay experience in a genre where there is generally less variety in game mechanics and the emphasis is on realism more than anything else. This leaves developers free to do what's really important: create highly detailed post-apocalyptic environments in shades of grey and brown. It's really depressing to look at the PS3 software charts and see that four out of the top ten games are from the same genre. It's even more depressing to look at the Xbox charts and see that eight out of the top ten are from the same genre. Lets hope the next generation has a little more variety.
Inb4 fanboys start complaining because I said something nasty about their favourite game and accuse me of being ignorant/baised/whatever. Stay classy, guys.
