unpopular retro opinions

[Edward850]

For me to take Playstation emulation seriously, someone needs to come up with modern serial cable support. Somehow it's 2022 and not only is the PS1 serial cable completely unsupported in emulation, you can't even get it to work on soft/hard modded hardware. It all needs real and unmodified hardware.

[scalliano]

@AlexMax Like I said, they are getting better all the time (Quake II 64 actually works on Mupen64plus now with a bit of tweaking), but in some cases they aren't perfect and I still have games that don't work outside of the OG system. Case in point: I still have about 60% of games in my 360/OGX library that don't work through Series X back-compat - Unreal Championship, Doom 3 (non-BFG), all of the CAVE shmups, Quake 4 and arguably the best versions of NFS Most Wanted and Burnout 2 to name a few.

 

Silvergun is still worth playing on Saturn, since the Story mode actually allows you to use continues, something oddly stripped out from the 360/Switch versions. That said, Beetle Saturn runs it pretty well.

 

I get that optical media and drives are prone to failure, but even then there are solutions. For example, the drive in my PS2 has been busted for years but I was able to softmod it and install all of my games to a HDD. There are also ODE solutions that allow games to be loaded from HDDs or SD cards. Granted, those devices are pretty hardcore and are definitely out of my price range, but they are at least an option.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of these stock-hardware-or-bust types - I'm a massive fan of the Raspberry Pi and I love having a small, multi-system emulation device that I can just chuck in a bag when travelling, it's just that for myself, at least with some titles, there's no other real option. Thankfully, that collection is getting smaller all the time and I am very much looking forward to the day when I can fire up Xbox Doom 3 at 4K60.

 

@Edward850 Considering how many emulators have online support for even 16bit systems, that is a glaring omission. I legit had no idea.

[heliumlamb]

27 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

For me to take Playstation emulation seriously, someone needs to come up with modern serial cable support. Somehow it's 2022 and not only is the PS1 serial cable completely unsupported in emulation, you can't even get it to work on soft/hard modded hardware. It all needs real and unmodified hardware.

it's going to be added to XEBRA, but exactly when it will be added is unclear. hopefully in at least a decade

[indigotyrian]

3 hours ago, scalliano said:

Except that emulation for a lot of systems is somewhat out in the weeds - N64, Saturn, Jaguar, PS2, PS3, OG Xbox, 360, etc. I'm all about emulation, but there are a lot of games that still don't work properly or take excessive amounts of arsing about to make playable. Granted it's slowly getting better, but the spotty state of N64 emulation in particular was the reason I went and bought on old system back in 2008. Quake II is less fun when it has a permanent wallhack you can't turn off and the screen disappears when you try to swim. There will eventually be a time when emulation completely supplants real hardware, but in the meantime it's nice to have a backup plan.

 

As for CRT's, maybe it's because I grew up in the PAL regions but scanlines were never really a thing for me as they were much less pronounced on sets in our region due to the higher vertical resolution. I remember the first time I fired up an NTSC game on my modchipped PS1 and it felt like I was playing the game through a set of venetian blinds. It's part of the reason I can't stand scanline filters because the old tellys I used (and still do) didn't look like that. Still, if you don't have space for a zonking great tube TV then stuff like the OSSC is always an option (literally the only way I can hook my PS2/OG Xbox up to my LG panel because SCART isn't a thing anymore).

 

From what I understand N64, Saturn, and PS2/PS3 emulation are all in pretty decent states right now. Shit's always changing.

[taufan99]

I wonder how accurate most N64 emulators nowadays are for me to play Doom 64 Merciless Edition II with complete, accurate features on a low-end modern laptop. I know Immorpher himself recommends the Ares multi-emulator, but I'm afraid my laptop might get toast trying to run it.

[Ozcar]

Sonic was alway good (except 06).

[SealSpace]

On 7/11/2022 at 5:09 PM, YoshizinGordin said:

Corridor 7: Alien Invasion Is The Best Doom Clone On The WOLF-3D Engine.

Well despite what my pfp suggests, i think the Blake Stone games are the true champions of the engine.

 

That being said, I do agree that C7 is genuinely the most fun and spooky game to play on the engine over and over and it has by far the most vivid wall textures/animations, best firing sounds (horror-based ones), and music/soundtrack by far. 

 

I'll list more unpopular opinions of my own next time. 

[fai1025]

I don't really like any Build games

[CFWMagic]

System Shock > Classic Doom. Story, complexity and depth trump hectic fun. Now if only System Shock was mappable and moddable before nightdive re-releases ...

[Sonikkumania]

Slim round glasses look fucking atrocious. Yuck.

 

Also, I honest to God cannot stand Queen's music. It makes me nauseous. That singing is horrible and song themes really aren't anything for me. No, no and no.

Edited November 23, 2022 by Sonikkumania

[SealSpace]

Some more hot unpopular opinions of mine regarding Boomer Shooters: 

 

Wolfenstein 3D, Spear of Destiny, and Rise of the Triad are better and cooler games than Doom (original Ultimate Doom at least, Doom II is much closer, but still). 

 

Despite not having played it yet, I think Blake Stone: Planet Strike should be the absolute best commercial Wolf3d engine game by far and not Rise of the Triad. And Planet Strike also deserves more official expansion and add-on with more new content (bosses/enemies and a new weapon and more maps with animdefs). 

 

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold (as well as Planet Strike) is also the superior Wolf3d engine game to Rise of the Triad (and so is C7 in terms of fun value and atmosphere, but definitely not story and characters though, which is where RoTT shines the best and C7 is the most bland). 

 

Duke Nukem 3D is a good game, but it's a bit overrated, I think Blood and Powerslave look like more interesting Build engine games than it.

Shadow Warrior is the absolute best Build engine game by far (not sure if this is exactly an unpopular opinion). 

 

Corridor 7 is a better and more fun and enjoyable game than Duke Nukem 3D in both its Floppy and CD versions and has better and more interesting enemies and weapons and a genuinely cooler and more badass atmosphere and music/soundtrack by infinity. 

Edited November 24, 2022 by SealSpace : Decided to separate my entire list of unpopular opinions into several posts for more specificity for each of them for posters to react to.

[SealSpace]

Part 2 of my unpopular opinions: 

 

Heretic and Hexen I are much more awesome and better Doom engine games than Doom with Hexen being the second best commercial game on the engine in my opinion and both deserve new content (like more maps with new bosses and enemies).

 

Marathon looks like a way better and more fun game series than Halo and any other FPS that developer Bungie has ever made after. Marathon is pretty decent and the best Bungie FPS game I've seen (and the only one I've felt interested enough to play). 

 

That being said, I think Marathon itself is also a bit overrated compared to other boomer shooters. Rebel Moon Rising is the cooler and more interesting experience. And Eradicator and Disruptor are also the seemingly much better experiences as well. 

 

Redneck Rampage is boring from what I've played so far. The only fun and interesting thing about the game are just its redneck characters and humor. 

Duke Nukem 3D and Redneck Rampage are inferior to Chex Quest and Hacx in terms of enjoyability and fun. 

Edited November 24, 2022 by SealSpace

[SealSpace]

Part 3 of my unpopular opinions: 

 

Icon of Sin is the best Doom boss (alongside Mother Demon of D64). 

 

Spider Mastermind is sometimes a much cooler and more interesting boss than the Cyberdemon. 

 

Blake Stone has the greatest and best bosses of any commercial Wolf3d engine game by far, with either C7 or RoTT coming in a close second. 

 

Strife still has the greatest and best bosses of any commercial Doom engine game by far, with either Hexen or Heretic coming in a close second. A shame there weren't more bosses in it and games with bosses much like Strife's on the engine back in the day. 

 

Wolf3d, Heretic, and Hexen's bosses and even regular enemies are also better than the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind by far. 

 

Corridor 7's bosses and enemies are overall far more badass, appealing, and interesting than both Wolf3d's, Duke 3d's, and possibly even Doom's and RoTT's to a lesser extent. 

[SealSpace]

Part 4 of my unpopular opinions: 

 

Operation Body Count is NOT the absolute worst Wolf3d engine game (or Wolf3d-adjacent game) and is not THAT terrible either and is actually a more fun and cooler game than Super Noah's Ark 3D with better music/soundtrack and features. 

 

Witchaven I and II are the absolute worst FPS games from Capstone/Intracorps by far. William Shatner's Tekwar looks like the way better and more interesting game and the cooler experience than both of them combined. And so does both C7 and OBC. 

 

Half Life is overrated. At best it seems to be about on par with Quake. Hexen II seems like the far more awesome and interesting 3D FPS game than both Half-Life and Quake. And so is Goldeneye (for the former at least).  

 

[SealSpace]

Part 5 of my unpopular opinions:

 

Wolf3d engine games >>>>> Build engine games and even Doom engine games as a whole (except for Strife and MAYBE Hexen I and REKKR at least) 
 

Strife still is the absolute best commercial Doom engine game by far and deserves a sequel or spiritual successor from the original dev team or more official expansion/add-on content (new bosses, new enemies, and new additions to the Sigil superweapon itself and new stories/characters and new and deeper lore as well). 

 

Cybermage: Darklight Awakening looks like a more awesome and interesting game than System Shock (but I def gotta start playing both games sometime).

 

In Pursuit of Greed looks like a way cooler and more awesome and interesting game than Cyclones. And so does Shadowcaster. 

 

More classic 2.5D Sprite-based FPS games with massive bosses and superweapons/diverse inventory and rpg elements that are more similar or akin to Strife, Cybermage, and IPOG (but better) should have existed on custom engines outside the Doom, Build, and Wolf3d engine back in the 90's. 

More Raven engine games should have existed either in the 90's or beyond. 

 

Catacomb 3D actually looks and feels like a more interesting and cooler game series than Wolfenstein 3D in many aspects. 

 

That's all for now. I will list more if I can think of any.  

Edited November 24, 2022 by SealSpace

[ILuvDoomguy]

I thought Duke Nukem Forever was an excellent game, better than Duke Nukem 3D.

[Noiser]

3 hours ago, SealSpace said:

That being said, I do agree that C7 is genuinely the most fun and spooky game to play on the engine over and over and it has by far the most vivid wall textures/animations, best firing sounds (horror-based ones), and music/soundtrack by far. 

S2 S2 S2

 

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

2 hours ago, SealSpace said:

Strife still has the greatest and best bosses of any commercial Doom engine game by far, with either Hexen or Heretic coming in a close second.

Agreed, compared to Doom and it's sequels they're extremely underrated. I've seen a couple of people mapping for Heretic but yeah, not many.

 

On topic: Doom 3 is the best Doom game, and worth of the Doom title.

[Biz!]

I despise any generic-shmuck rpg with "magic" and all that, whether party system or zelda-style. I've tried time and time again, and the closest I've enjoyed to an RPG was Chess, and don't forget Strife, never played Hexen though.

[SealSpace]

 

2 hours ago, Noiser said:

S2 S2 S2

 

Another C7 enjoyer. 

 

2 hours ago, xX_Lol6_Xx said:

Agreed, compared to Doom and it's sequels they're extremely underrated. I've seen a couple of people mapping for Heretic but yeah, not many.

 

On topic: Doom 3 is the best Doom game, and worth of the Doom title.

 

Another Strife enjoyer. Even better. Glad you agree with my sentiments on the game, mate. 

Both Blake Stone and Strife are the two absolute best boomer shooters/FPS's in existence and probably the only PC games I admire and love more than C7 and Hexen itself. Cybermage and IPOG are also on my "to-play" list as far as games currently represented in Samsara goes and should be potentially among the best FPS's in my book as well. And whatever other obscure 2D boomer shooters out there that might be just as unique and fascinating as the aforementioned ones, even though the chances of such existing are probably slim to none.

[Dr. Zin]

5 hours ago, SealSpace said:

Half Life is overrated.

 

Yes, ignoring the fact that HL1 was a terrible influence on later games (totally linear gameplay stringing cutscenes together), even taken on its own merits the game started to run out of steam after the encounter with the tentacles in the blast pit. There's a lot of recycled ideas, blatant padding and sequences that just go on too long ("On a Rail"), plus the lack of enemy variety really becomes apparent after the 30th time you're ambushed by HECU with MP5s. The bigger problem for a game so heavily reliant on story is that you quickly run out of goals that aren't transparent switch hunts. "Go to the surface to get help" is compelling, "Flip switch X to open this arbitrarily locked door" isn't. Even reaching the Lambda complex ends up being a letdown since nothing is really explained and you get immediately thrust into Xen in all it's buggy glory, where the plot evaporates completely. It didn't help that the Xen levels looked and played like rejects from a bad Quake 2 expansion pack. Overall, I think Half Life's reputation is totally the result of the time it came out. If the game had been released six months later it wouldn't have had nearly the same impact, since there were (IMO) several games released in 1999 that far outshone it in immersive storytelling - for example, System Shock 2.

Edited November 24, 2022 by Dr. Zin

[Wyrmwood]

I prefer N64 games (at least what's available) on Switch over original hardware. Better looking, smoother running and no wobbly analog stick.

[xdarkmasterx]

On 11/24/2022 at 1:53 AM, SealSpace said:

Strife still has the greatest and best bosses of any commercial Doom engine game by far, with either Hexen or Heretic coming in a close second. A shame there weren't more bosses in it and games with bosses much like Strife's on the engine back in the day.

 

I agree, but that's not saying much, bosses in Doom engine games (and most FPS games for that matter) are straight up ass :x

[SealSpace]

On 11/24/2022 at 2:17 AM, Dr. Zin said:

 

Yes, ignoring the fact that HL1 was a terrible influence on later games (totally linear gameplay stringing cutscenes together), even taken on its own merits the game started to run out of steam after the encounter with the tentacles in the blast pit. There's a lot of recycled ideas, blatant padding and sequences that just go on too long ("On a Rail"), plus the lack of enemy variety really becomes apparent after the 30th time you're ambushed by HECU with MP5s. The bigger problem for a game so heavily reliant on story is that you quickly run out of goals that aren't transparent switch hunts. "Go to the surface to get help" is compelling, "Flip switch X to open this arbitrarily locked door" isn't. Even reaching the Lambda complex ends up being a letdown since nothing is really explained and you get immediately thrust into Xen in all it's buggy glory, where the plot evaporates completely. It didn't help that the Xen levels looked and played like rejects from a bad Quake 2 expansion pack. Overall, I think Half Life's reputation is totally the result of the time it came out. If the game had been released six months later it wouldn't have had nearly the same impact, since there were (IMO) several games released in 1999 that far outshone it in immersive storytelling - for example, System Shock 2.

Forgive me for my lack of context. PM me if you wish to know why I said that.

[CFWMagic]

On 11/24/2022 at 8:17 AM, Dr. Zin said:

 

-snip-

Thank fuck someone mentions System Shock 2. That said, SS2 really fell apart for me once the player reaches the Rickenbacker. Even then, the logs of a certain doctor going through the Body Of The Many kind of made it all tolerable anyway. Biggest issue I have with System Shock 2, ultimately, is how utterly useless half of it's PSI abilities are, and to a lesser degree, how situational and niche non-standard weapons are. Still better than blowing YOURSELF up with System Shock 1's railgun though, I suppose.

[SealSpace]

On 11/25/2022 at 3:02 AM, xdarkmasterx said:

 

I agree, but that's not saying much, bosses in Doom engine games (and most FPS games for that matter) are straight up ass :x

Kinda.

 

But Hexen and Strife (especially Strife) makes the best damn bosses on the entire engine.

 

I reiterate, I still wish there was a sequel or spiritual successor to Strife on the engine with even more awesome bosses (a bigger better final one) and other Doom engine games with great bosses like that.

Edited November 29, 2022 by SealSpace

[Woolie Wool]

It's a tragedy Alps SKCL/SKCM keyboards died while Cherry MX lived, even the relatively undesirable complicated Alps like the final-generation Black Alps in my Dell AT101W are vastly superior to any original Cherry MX switch and probably most of the new hipster switches. MX Blues especially are godawful and sound like Maggie Simpson sucking on a pacifier. (I know there's Matias, but they're not the same and their reliability is horrible)

 

If somebody could remake complicated Blue or White Alps with a keyboard to go with it, that might actually convince me to pay the sort of outrageous prices the higher-end keyboard kits sell for.

Edited December 1, 2022 by Woolie Wool

[HeatedChocolate]

Comona > Farbanti (Does 2001 count as retro?), Comona is a big giant dogfight with an interesting setpiece, aircraft radio never ceases to be entertaining and that fuckin' music is S+ tier, even among the rest of the series. Farbanti is just a city where you need to get x amount of points, basically right after Emancipation (And Whiskey Corridor, both of which are the exact same "Get x amount of points" missions, Emancipation at least has A+ music and Whiskey Corridor has a different setting). Yeah sure, the last Yellow squadron battle but so what, they're late to the most important battle of the war (In typical Ace Combat enemy squadron style, ofc).

[Optimus]

When people talk about adventure games, everyone remembers Monkey Island, it's the most trendy classic, but it wasn't my favorite at all. I think it's too overrated at times.

[hybridial]

1 hour ago, Optimus said:

When people talk about adventure games, everyone remembers Monkey Island, it's the most trendy classic, but it wasn't my favorite at all. I think it's too overrated at times.

 

I like Monkey Island fine, it's not my favourite because I'm not that much of a comedy person, but what I will say is I did not like Monkey Island 2 at all. I found the game was obnoxious and poorly designed.