What's the most overrated game ever in your opinion?

[potato_hamster]

Alara317 said:

potato_hamster said:

This is yet another example of "This feature of a game doesn't bother me very much, therefore it shouldn't bother anyone very much". It's just so narrow-minded.

Let's try another example to get the point across.

"Find the hovercraft levels annoying in Battletoads? Bullshit! That mechanic is perfect! It's not the game's fault that you're just shitty at the game for not literally memorizing patterns and executing perfectly in order to beat it!"

Horse. Shit. Some people to this day have refused to touch Battletoads for decades because they were never able to conquer that stage and couldn't care less if they ever do. They're not wrong to feel that way. That game was unmercifully hard to the point where it became intolerable for many people.

Video games are supposed to be fun. If some part of a game isn't fun for you, that's entirely valid. If it makes you not want to play the game, that can definitely be considered a flaw of the game. If it's so annoying you would rather never play the game again than deal with it? It can be considered a huge flaw.

You're going to have to come to terms with the fact that other people can have perfectly valid opinions that you don't hold.

Sounds to me like someone really pressed your buttons. 

If you actually read what he said, then you would see that they gave perfect gameplay themed reasons why the whining baby mechanic was actually important and how it worked. 

The Aesthetic and theme of the game are that Yoshi is escorting BABIES to their parents, protecting them along the way like a mother would. From an evolutionary standpoint, the sound of a crying baby is supposed to trigger the instincts to care for said baby, and the frequency and tone are both pitch perfect to get parents to leap into action. This game is emulating that, using your desire to care for your baby as incentive to teach you to get better. 

Therefore, from both a thematic and gameplay standpoint, the whining baby makes perfect sense. 

It sounds to me like you're just upset that someone else found value in something you dislike. Either that or you suck at games and the crying baby never stopped for you, thus enraging you to the point of frustration instead of having the desired effect of having you...

....in the words of a Dark Souls player...

Git Gud. 

(To clarify, I absolutely hate that damn baby, but from both a gameplay and thematic standpoint, it is a great mechanic. That is the difference between objectivity and subjectivity. Don't try to use the difference between those two to devalue one's argument, it will make you look like a fool.) 

Ohh I'm sorry, is Sea of Thieves supposed to be considered a perfect game because while it is fun, the gameplay that quickly turns into a repetitive, samey, grind fest was designed to be that way? I mean I'm sure I could come up with all kinds of err... "perfect gameplay themed reasons" why designing the gameplay to turn into a grind fest is totally valid even though it gets boring and annoying for many players.

Nope. This argument is horseshit every time it's used. Just because a game creator intended a feature to accomplish a certain thing doesn't mean the game is better because it exists, and accomplishes it as intended.

You can argue up and down why this crying baby element in Yoshi's Island makes perfect sense for "gameplay themed reasons" but that doesn't make it any less valid if someone is completely turned from from playing that game because of it. See, "if you read what I said", you'd realize the game doesn't matter, and it's not at all about someone finding value in something I dislike (because I don't dislike it). To be crystal clear: I'm arguing that  the idea that designed elements of the game should be accepted and respected simply because they work as intended is a horse shit argument.

So let's take yet another example. I can't count how many people of the years have talked about Resident Evil with me and told me they never bothered finishing it because the control scheme was too cumbersome and frustrating. Well, it was designed to be frustrating to instill a sense of panic in the  player and force them to be precise in stressful situations. It was intended to make the horror-survival game more intense. Those are "perfect gameplay themed reasons", right? Well it seems strange then that new Resident Evil games don't have this control scheme. They also dropped the "you need an item to save the game mechanic" from future games for similar reasons. In fact, even the remake of Resident Evil offered more modern control schemes. Huh. I wonder why that is...

Same goes for games with arbitrarily long stretches between save points, causing players to lose significant amounts of hard-earned progress if they die because fuck you, get better. Same goes for games with steep, almost random increases in difficulty. Same goes for games that require intense sequences of memorized, timed button presses in order to succeed. Same goes for supposedly legendary weapons all-powerful weapons specifically designed to take down specific enemies that can't even survive a single fight with said enemy. Same goes for making a game needlessly difficult because if it were easier, players could breeze through it in less than a hour (see many NES games). Same goes for requiring players to engage in long, repetitive grinds in order to progress in the game. Need I go on?

These are all design choices, these are all features working exactly as they were designed to, they can all be justified with "perfect gameplay themed reasons", but they can turn people off wanting to play or finish the game, and thus they deserve criticism. So please, spare me your bullshit that claims otherwise.

(P.S. There's nothing objective about whether or not the crying baby makes Yoshi's Island a better game. That's entirely subjective.)