Game Obsessions You Don't Understand

[Shanoa]

I don't think there's gaming obssessions I don't understand. Naturally, at many points in my life, I had that sentiment toward many games but it hasn't happened in many, many years. Nowadays,  I just chalk those off as "they ain't for me but I can see why folks would be into it". 

 

For the sake of the topic though, years ago I didn't understand the appeal of fighting games. That train of thoughts went well into the year 2000's. Where I live there's never been an arcade scene, unfortunately, so for the longest time I just outright dismissed those games as mere button mashers.

 

Oh boy, how wrong I was...now that I play them these days they're anything but that.

 

I'll say though, while not 100% on-topic, I envy all the kids who're into Fortnite and share that love of the game at school and whatnot. When I was in school I got bullied a lot for playing video games. While Fortnite isn't for me I wish I had something similar back then. Sadly, it would take several years before video games ended up mainstream so...

[Master O]

1 hour ago, Shanoa said:

For the sake of the topic though, years ago I didn't understand the appeal of fighting games. That train of thoughts went well into the year 2000's. Where I live there's never been an arcade scene, unfortunately, so for the longest time I just outright dismissed those games as mere button mashers.

 

 

SNK Boss Syndrome FTW

[Shanoa]

10 hours ago, Master O said:

 

SNK Boss Syndrome FTW

I've yet to try an SNK boss, I mostly seen them on videos but I'm not in a hurry to get Genocide Cutter'd into a second Genocide Cutter for over 50% of my life.

[Master O]

1 hour ago, Shanoa said:

I've yet to try an SNK boss, I mostly seen them on videos but I'm not in a hurry to get Genocide Cutter'd into a second Genocide Cutter for over 50% of my life.

 

The best place to start with SNK games is the original Fatal Fury.  Geese Howard is the very first SNK boss with SNK Syndrome.  All you have to do is walk up to him and throw him over and over.   Essentially, with SNK bosses, you must bait the AI into making incorrect moves then spam the same move over and over again:

 

https://www.giantbomb.com/snk-boss-syndrome/3015-2788/

 

In KOF '94, at least for the first round vs Rugal, you can also just jump towards him, land right in front of him, and throw.  After that, it's finding how to bait the AI into making mistakes.

 

 

[jazzmaster9]

As I expected, this turned out to be the "set  fire to popular popular trends" so i'll bite.

 

I never understood the appeal of Simulation like Sports games. I always preferred the Arcade approach like NBA Jam.

[snapshot]

Snotty

[[McD] James]

 

 

 

 

17 hours ago, Master O said:

The best place to start with SNK games is the original Fatal Fury.  Geese Howard is the very first SNK boss with SNK Syndrome.  All you have to do is walk up to him and throw him over and over.   Essentially, with SNK bosses, you must bait the AI into making incorrect moves then spam the same move over and over again:

 

https://www.giantbomb.com/snk-boss-syndrome/3015-2788/

 

In KOF '94, at least for the first round vs Rugal, you can also just jump towards him, land right in front of him, and throw.  After that, it's finding how to bait the AI into making mistakes.

 

Personally, I wouldn't recommend playing the original Fatal Fury, as it really has not aged well at all. But I would recommend watching the Fatal Fury anime series. It's not great, but easily one of the better fighting game anime out there. It's all on Youtube if you're interested, along with the Art of Fighting and Samurai Shodown anime.

[Master O]

1 hour ago, Ajora said:

 

Personally, I wouldn't recommend playing the original Fatal Fury, as it really has not aged well at all. But I would recommend watching the Fatal Fury anime series. It's not great, but easily one of the better fighting game anime out there. It's all on Youtube if you're interested, along with the Art of Fighting and Samurai Shodown anime.

 

He said he now likes fighting games which is why I was talking about Fatal Fury itself, not anime adaptations.  He hadn't previously played any SNK fighters and the first Fatal Fury's as good a place as any, since most of SNK's iconic characters in King of Fighters either come from Fatal Fury or Art of Fighting.

[Nekr0s1s]

This is a rather recent obsession, as far as i know. But basically, why are some games names written in uppercase? (such as Wrath: Aeon of Ruin, Dusk, etc.) Are developers so desperate to call people's attention, they are resorting to shouting?

[[McD] James]

2 hours ago, Nekr0s1s said:

This is a rather recent obsession, as far as i know. But basically, why are some games names written in uppercase? (such as Wrath: Aeon of Ruin, Dusk, etc.) Are developers so desperate to call people's attention, they are resorting to shouting?

 

I did a Google search for "nes covers" and nearly everything I saw was in all caps. 

[Master O]

3 hours ago, Nekr0s1s said:

This is a rather recent obsession, as far as i know. But basically, why are some games names written in uppercase? (such as Wrath: Aeon of Ruin, Dusk, etc.) Are developers so desperate to call people's attention, they are resorting to shouting?

 

That's not shouting.

 

If the developers had written the names in all caps like "WRATH: AEON OF RUIN, DUSK", then that would be shouting.

[hybridial]

Oh boy, here we go.

 

Half Life. Half Life sucked. 

 

Dark Souls, and perhaps even more than than the acclaim that the game gets is the idea that it's really hard or is some kind of standard for that, its not. I beat 1 and 2 for the record then decided I've had enough for forever. 

 

Rockstar games - the first three GTA games were novelties, everything else from them puts me to sleep. 

 

Online gaming - It was never a replacement for playing with other people socially. 

 

Esports - but then again I can say that about most sports in general. 

 

Looter Shooters - See Half Life. 

 

hm, all things considered I thought I'd have more than that but, I feel merely disliking something isn't really enough for me to mention it as an answer to the topic, so I guess that's it. 

 

 

[luke11685]

Angry German Kid was obsessed with Unreal Tournament, some Minecraft kids screaming,ninja temper tantrums (cursing, shouting, reporting to epic Games too much,protecting one guy who enjoyed using aimbots in Fortnite and showing this on YouTube I guess ...etc.).

[cambreaKer]

7 minutes ago, luke11685 said:

Angry German Kid was obsessed with Unreal Tournament

wasn't that video satire?

[TheOrganGrinder]

Sports management games.

 

There are plenty of game obsessions that I don't share, but sports management games are the genre I've bounced off the hardest in attempting to understand why other people develop sometimes obsessive degrees of fascination with such games.

[Skootroot]

Death Stranding. The game looks so good and the story is great but the gameplay is complete shit and doesn't sound fun to play at all

[jazzmaster9]

3 hours ago, hybridial said:

Dark Souls, and perhaps even more than than the acclaim that the game gets is the idea that it's really hard or is some kind of standard for that, its not. I beat 1 and 2 for the record then decided I've had enough for forever. 

 

 

 

I can beat contra without the code... does not mean Contra isn't hard

[doomsucksass]

2 hours ago, cambreaKer said:

wasn't that video satire?

I think so.......But that must mean people like that were common then if someone had to make a video making fun of it

[Doomkid]

17 hours ago, Nekr0s1s said:

Are developers so desperate to call people's attention, they are resorting to shouting?

Seriously, we can tell those pesky DOOM developers are just trying to shout the title at you since the game has nothing of substance to offer!

[seed]

5 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Seriously, we can tell those pesky DOOM developers are just trying to shout the title at you since the game has nothing of substance to offer!

 

Yea, like really, it's just a stylistic choice that has been there since times immemorial... There's TONS of games that have done this, and will continue to do so.

 

Coming back to this topic, another obsession I don't *quite* get is System Shock. I understand what people appreciate at the series and I agree that they're not bad games by any means, but neither has aged well. The first game is pretty "user hostile" to say so with how clunky the interface is, and SS2 is just janky as fuck with horrible gunplay, weapons, physics, floaty movement, and a very rushed ending (or rather, the entirety of The Body of the Many chapter). Atmosphere, music, sound, and level design (except the end) are basically the strongest points of the series, everything else is underwhelming.

 

The original Deus Ex is a far more polished cyberpunk-styled game, it learned from SS2 and did everything better than it. And it also aged much better, but shamefully people barely mention it anymore...

[hybridial]

@seed It's very easy in System Shock and System Shock 2's case. Oh, you're right about them being hard to play and being dated and clunky, you are 100% right about that, but....

 

System Shock is genuinely interesting. The design of both games remain quite unique to this day, given the fact that I'd call Bioshock a successor in name only and reject it quite strongly as really being legitimately connected or being remotely as good. Deus Ex indeed was the next step for a lot of System Shock 2's ideas... and might have been the last time any game actually moved them forward. But the same reason that makes people's love for Deus Ex endure is the exact same reason why System Shock 1 and 2 endure. They were landmark games that still make most modern games design look childish by comparison. I still find 2 pretty reasonably playable though, and thats even playing it with a controller.

 

And I'll reiterate that I'll get where you're coming from on calling it "dated", but generally speaking that argument is usually a reason not to think or to hide the fact game design has devolved, not evolved in the last 15 years. 

 

Oh and Bioshock Infinite? It's the game I most hate, I may have played worse, but I'll never hate a game more than that one. But, well people at least kinda get the problem with that more, meaning I kinda might as well shrug my shoulders on it. 

 

 

[BBQgiraffe]

18 hours ago, hybridial said:

Oh boy, here we go.

 

Half Life. Half Life sucked. 

 

 

 

explain?

[hybridial]

2 minutes ago, BBQgiraffe said:

explain?

 

Alright. Well, part of why I hate it so much of course comes to do with how when it did so well, everybody copied it and it only made an entire genre horrible for years. Well, Halo probably helped with that. But that's incidental, I declared that Half Life sucked and so I will address that.

 

I'll also add that Half Life 2 was worse, way worse in every way and is a complete pile of garbage, but yeah that's going to be the conclusion of anyone who hated the first one in the first place because it doubles down on every bad thing and invents some new ones too. 

 

Okay, so story? The story is not worth caring about. It's incredibly dull, its related to you by talking heads because they were either unable or unwilling to be more interesting than that. And when the story is worthless, but its presence is what the game is built around, it becomes a constant problem.

 

That constant problem is the superficial linearity of the game's design. There is no dynamism to its gameplay, it is a bunch of theatrical set pieces that they give you one way to play. There's very little to its levels that rewards exploring or reflection. It's all style, there is no substance and its style is really boring and I have no idea why anybody ever liked it. Its a generic alien invasion story, thats it. It is soulless, it might be the first AAA game released that I would call genuinely soulless. 

 

And that's my reasons. And they're not going to change, you did ask me to explain but I'm not interested in a debate, because these games have been out for a long time, I played them a long time ago originally, PS2 and Xbox versions, then played the PC versions of both a couple of years later, and my stance back then was that they were boring and overrated, but as time goes on you might say the frustration with them has grown because of how much damage I think they did to game design, in the FPS genre and in general. 

 

 

[[McD] James]

It always baffles me whenever a fan of first-person shooters say they don't like, and sometimes even hate Half-Life. Even when people (see the post above me) explain in great detail why they don't like Half-Life, it always sounds like they're talking about a completely different game. I prefer Half-Life 1 a fair bit over the sequel, but I found Half-Life 2's characters to be very fleshed out and compelling. The setting wasn't innovative by any means, but it all felt so incredibly believable and vivid.

 

I'm about 75% through the original Deus EX, and it's hard to say if I like it more or less than System Shock 2. Certainly, the gameplay is far more balanced, but System Shock 2's story sucked me in a lot better. System Shock 2's setting was a lot more interesting, and the characters and your relation to them felt a lot more personal. Deus EX's writing is generally quite strong, but JC suffers from being a very dull character who isn't very good at thinking for himself or taking any strong stances on anything. He usually just mindlessly goes along with whatever NPC he's currently doing a quest for is telling him, never truly questioning himself or anyone he's at any point working with. I get that he's supposed to be a stand-in for the person that's controlling him, but your options for how you act out JC's character in regards to the story are very limited. 

[hybridial]

Just now, Ajora said:

It always baffles me whenever a fan of first-person shooters say they don't like, and sometimes even hate Half-Life. Even when people (see the post above me) explain in great detail why they don't like Half-Life, it always sounds like they're talking about a completely different game. I prefer Half-Life 1 a fair bit over the sequel, but I found Half-Life 2's characters to be very fleshed out and compelling. The setting wasn't innovative by any means, but it all felt so incredibly believable and vivid.

 

Just as I'm baffled why anybody would find it compelling, because I have a great love for story, and even seen some games do it well, and seen some games that maybe didn't translate the story into gameplay that well but still had a good story, but Half life is both a bad story and a badly told story. It just doesn't get into the realms of excruciatingly bad like say, a Bioshock Infinite might have done, but its still bad, and its that dull sort of bad that makes them uninteresting on top. 

 

And I guess I have made myself clear on that, I probably am best leaving it there because I don't want to start any major argument. 

[reflex17]

I'm kind of with hybridial on this one. I'm a fan of the Half-life games and there's no doubt the impact it had on in-game cinematic storytelling, but I largely see HL1 & 2 as only really exciting on a first playthrough. The focus on set-pieces usually with only one way to progress, along with the ingame cinematics make repeated playthroughs a test of putting yourself through the paces. Dark Forces 2 came before Half-life and while there's a lot more texture misalignments in Jedi Knight, I would rate its level design much higher than Half-life in general. Both games are fairly linear but I find DF2's levels just more fun to run around in. Both Half-life games left me wanting more, and not in a good way. Areas that I found really fun like the canyon section in HL1 only last a few minutes. Of course it's easy to judge looking back, in my mind they could both use like '25% more game.'

[hybridial]

Yeah, I suppose in a way I could actually extend what I don't like about the Half Life series to a bigger issue in general, and that is gameplay design that has more in common with cinema than with games. Some games actually do it successfully, as in they borrow cinematic methods and make them work without cutting down their design, I'd say when Metal Gear was at its best it did this well, and when it wasn't at its best, we got every one after 3. And I can cherry pick others, the original survival horror wave all were great because they understood that horror in both games and cinema share common things that will work in both, but didn't fall too much into the trap until later. I loved how Clock Tower was inspired so much by the filmography of Dario Argento but still had its own identity.

 

I maybe don't quite *hate* Resident Evil 4, in fact I will confess to liking it at the time, but now, I really don't care for it. RE2 Remake is the game that should have been in the first place just in terms of how it should have handled things. 

 

At some point, and lets face it, it was when games went mainstream, the majority of companies played it safe, tried to chase after the mainstream audience and caused the whole industry to become bland and samey. It feels like only now are indy developers trying to offer alternatives. 

 

 

[seed]

I don't think there's going to be an argument on it, but to me it sounds more like personal preference rather than being objectively bad. Based on what you're saying, it sounds like you just don't like the design philosophy of the game, which is what others like, including yours truly.

 

No, the story isn't great, and it never was its selling point to begin with, it was the narrative, immersion, and fun but easy combat. It was never meant to be the pinnacle of storytelling. I agree that after it came out others copied it like madmen, but that happened before, did it not? After Doom came out a good number of clones followed, then when Duke came out, same thing happened, then HL followed and, you get the idea.

 

Again, I think it's just the fact that your hatred for it is amplified by its popularity, as its design is anything but appealing for you. I personally like it for what it is, and I am glad it influenced many games, because a lot of 90s shooters level design wasn't really all that good and sometimes was even obtuse, once HL and the likes of it dropped the experience got streamlined, but things took a turn this decade, did they not? We're once again going back to nonlinear design, exploration, and player freedom, not to mention the revival of retro styled games.

 

As about Bioshock Infinite, in the recent years I noticed that it started receiving plenty of hate, but it seems to be more because Bioshock fans hate it as a Bioshock game rather than for supposedly being a terrible game in itself. It seems pretty interesting to me.

 

27 minutes ago, Ajora said:

I about 75% through the original Deus EX, and it's hard to say if I like it more or less than System Shock 2. Certainly, the gameplay is far more balanced, but System Shock 2's story sucked me in a lot better. System Shock 2's setting was a lot more interesting, and the characters and your relation to them felt a lot more personal. Deus EX's writing is generally quite strong, but JC suffers from being a very dull character who isn't very good at thinking for himself or taking any strong stances on anything. He usually just mindlessly goes along with whatever NPC he's currently doing a quest for is telling him, never truly questioning himself or anyone he's at any point working with. I get that he's supposed to be a stand-in for the person that's controlling him, but your options for how you act out JC's character in regards to the story are very limited. 

 

Well, not a whole lot of freedom, but it's still more than in SS2 as non-lethal playthroughs are possible I think. And it also has multiple endings, although depending on perspective, it kind of is a shame that your choices don't matter too much considering you still end up picking one of them at the end regardless of your choices during the game. Choices don't play a huge factor when it comes to the end basically.

[[Vitz!]]

I can't understand people who spend time and/or money on games with gacha or lootboxes.

I mean... I understand that some of these games may have nice characters, sometimes a good enough story and/or gameplay, but the fact that they are trying to rip me off at any chance they get (especially with mobile games) really destroys any mood I would have for playing that kind of game.

There are better games that provide the same amount and/or of fun that don't have any of that bullshit, but why people still give that filth attention? Maybe people really like to get ripped off.

[ReaperAA]

To be brutally honest, the love of Half Life is not due to its storyline but rather how the story was presented. At @seed mentioned, it was the narrative, immersion, and fun but easy combat with some puzzles. This made it a unique experience back in the day. Although I can understand that those who don't like that stuff may hate it for how much it influenced the industry.

 

Now moving away from Half Life discusion, I want to talk about a game franchise that I really don't get the appeal of. I hope things won't get too hot (as some of the devs of that games series are members of doomworld). I am talking about the Postal games (particularly Postal 2). Why do people love it so much? Now I admit I haven't played it but from the many videos that I have watched, its just a clunky game where the player has to do edgy stuff like killing and burning people, pissing on them, use cats as silencers etc etc. I mean, I understand some people may like that mayhem, but its not like other games didn't do it. For example, we can do all kinds of nasty stuff in GTA games as well but those games are also actually well made games with decent substance in them beyond the mayhem. What does Postal really offer?