I’m talking about games that you still like but you had no idea were criticized so much.
The perfect example for me is Sonic Unleashed.
I admit that the game has its bad things, but I would have never imagined that it was so hated at the time… Although, that could be extended to the entire Sonic franchise, since for many years I was not aware at all of that “Sonic was never good”, “Sonic had a rough transition to 3D” nonsense.
I made a post not all that long ago about Lords of the Fallen after discovering it myself, only to find that nobody else seemed to like it as much as I did (which, fair; it’s probably why I hadn’t heard of it until recently).
It’s not as good as a Fromsoft game, or Lies of P, but, to me anyway, it’s like the 2nd best soulslike that isn’t a Fromsoft game. The major disappointments are minimal enemy variety, and the story is just kinda shit. The highlights are the combat and build variety, and unique aspects like tying item descriptions to your actual skills so you can’t read some descriptions unless you invest in “knowledge” of it. It just sucks that you don’t really get much from it because, again, the story is kinda shit.
Also it’s the only non Fromsoft soulslike I’ve played that has PvP. I got into Dark Souls and the rest because of the invasion system more than anything else, so LOTF having that was a big plus for me.
I have a lot of childhood nostalgia for Donkey Kong 64. If you were a kid who could only get a new game every few months or so, this giant behemoth of a game will last a long time.
But it undeniably is a bloated clusterfuck, the internet is not wrong in hindsight.
Next thing that comes to mind for me is the GBA port of Tales of Phantasia. Symphonia was a huge part of my adolescent years, and as soon as I heard this was getting a GBA remake I was all over it. Loved it, and didn’t hear until much later that GBA is apparently considered the worst version of the game. If PSP ever gets translated, I’d love to see what I missed out on…
Bro what people didn’t like DK64? I spent a large chunk of my childhood getting 100% in that game. Lanky Kong was my boy.
DK64 for me too. I played the shit out of it for probably a solid 6 months to a year and loved it but it has no doubt aged badly.
Honestly the collectathon genre as a whole doesn’t hold up much these days. A few modern games pull it off here and there, but going back and trying to play any of the classic Rare titles feels like a slog.
Loved all those games as a kid, and they did a ton to shape the industry, but they don’t really hold up.
hbomberguy did a 50+ hour 101% nightmare stream for trans charity a while back and I watched the whole thing. I would not subject myself to playing that game but damn it was interesting to see.
I wonder if a fan mod of DK64 where the bananas aren’t colored would fix many of the problems. I feel like that one small change might fix a lot of complaints. I haven’t played it though.
There’s a ROM hack that let’s you swap characters with a button press rather than trek through the level to find a swap barrel and then trek back again, and do that again and again for coins, bananas, etc.
Small change that has a big impact on the replayability.
If I ever do a DK64 playthrough I’ll check this out.
Literally every MMORPG targeted at an oldschool/hardcore/PvP oriented audience. Without fail the related comments and reviews will be littered by people angrily ranting on how these games are outdated and should change to be more casual
And inversely, games like RuneScape that changed to be more casual, which pissed off all of the tryhard players.
King’s Quest VIII: Mask of Eternity. Even as a kid, I felt like it was a very strange gore-and-action focus shift for the King’s Quest series. Only as an adult did I hear the story of executive meddling that lead to the complete tone and gameplay shift.
I rented Superman 64 as a kid, never knowing it was a universally hated game. We had fun with the weird multiplayer mode where you fly around in weird pod things. I remember flying through the rings too. The whole game makes zero sense in hindsight.
The game became that shitshow because Warner Bros execs got pissed that a “no-name” yuropeean company got the rights to make a licensed Superman game (because they were the only company that bothered to bid), so they did a lot of time-wasting requests to the developers.
https://www.retrojunk.com/a/C1CKNP9rjC/the-story-behind-superman-64
This. Check out the leaked beta on YouTube. It’s looks significantly better than the finished product
That looks fun.
I know right?? What a damn shame WB fucked Titus over like that
Dying Light 2. I honestly have no idea why so many people prefer the original.
Thief 3. I had never played a Thief game before and thought it was great. Apparently, fans of the first two games were disappointed with it at first. I think the criticism didn’t last long, though. Everyone now seems to agree that it was good.
Do you mean Thief: Deadly Shadows? That was the 3rd game in the series, and from what I understand it was pretty well received. The orphanage level alone is so highly regarded that it has its own Wikipedia page.
Now the 2014 reboot, just titled Thief, that was so poorly received the it basically killed the series. It might have been a decent game, but it was not a good Thief game.
Yes, I meant Deadly Shadows. It was liked overall, and moreso as the years went on, but I remember plenty of people thinking it was disappointing at the time. Heck, there’s one in this very thread. :P I haven’t played the first two (and I know that I need to), but I know that it deviated from those quote a bit, and that seemed to be one of the main things people disliked about it.
I must have missed that negative sentiment entirely. I played all three and had no complaints. Did some searching, and apparently a lot of the gripes were related to levels being cut down in size / broken down into pieces to allow for a console release (strict memory requirements). Also I think they changed engines for the 3rd game, or at least a lot of people complain that movement and controls were worse in DS. I guess ignorance is bliss, cause I enjoyed them all.
It’s a good game. Just not as good as the first two, that’s all. Many attributed it to the console release dumbing down the mechanics.
But, oh man, The Shalebridge Cradle is so awesome even if the rest of the games sucked so much as to be unplayable, that mission alone could redeem it.
At the time my parents were away on holiday or something. So I dragged my PC and awesome sound system upstairs and hooked them up to the big TV, ironically getting closer to the console experience. Darkening the whole room and getting immersed in the game was so awesome. And the Cradle scared the everliving shit out of me.
Good times.
Final Fantasy 8. I loved it but apparently I was in the minority.
FF8 has been going through a bit of a resurgence lately where it does seem to be getting a fair amount of praise. It used to get slated though.
8 is a very solid game. The issue is that it was always compared to 7 and 9
Which is funny since I’ve played all three of those for the first time recently, and FF7 doesn’t hold up in comparison to 8 and 9. But I can see at the time how 8 could be seen poorly in comparison to 7 and 9.
I also loved FF8. I’d be more interested in a remake of that one than 7 tbh.
Another FF8 enjoyer here! My husband and I got married on Halloween, so for the reception, I was Rinoa and he was Squall!
10/10 fantastic game!
I still love it.
E.T.
Yes really. I played it all the time as a kid and didn’t think it was any more difficult or abstract than the rest of the 2600’s catalogue. Granted, we kept the manual, which made a huge difference in understanding and enjoying its bizarre logic, but still. I had no idea it was so hated until at least a decade later.
it was actually way ahead of its time, for a game. One small bug (the workaround for which was in the manual) ruined its reputation. But I genuinely think it was a good game.
Also written in 6 weeks by one guy. Freaking impressive
What was the bug and workaround? :)
when climbing out of the pit, it was very easy to immediately fall back down (due to the pixel-perfect collision detection).
And here is an excerpt from the manual: “Even experienced extraterrestrials sometimes have difficulty levitating out of wells. Start to levitate E.T. by first pressing the controller button and then pushing your Joystick forward. E.T.'s neck will stretch as he rises to the top of the well (see E.T. levitating in Figure 1). Just when he reaches the top of the well and the scene changes to the planet surface (see Figure 2), STOP! Do not try to keep moving up. Instead, move your Joystick right, left, or to the bottom. Do not try to move up, or E.T. might fall back into the well.”
Wow yeah. That must have been a really infuriating gameplay issue, no wonder players were upset with it.
A shame the game was so rushed or I’m sure the dev would have fixed that in code.
he was forced to release it quickly to coincide with the film’s release. For comparison, it used to take a team of devs a couple of months to make a game. He had 6 weeks.
Also, if you read the manual, this essentially never happened to you. It was easy to avoid.
You also needed to read the manual. The game did stuff that other games at the time didn’t, for example, a contextual button. You couldn’t know what would happen unless you read the manual to learn what the icons meant. A lot of people never did and so decided that the game was bad.
Yeah, I played it as a teenager on emulation and was pretty mystified at why it was considered so much worse than the other things available on the system. Why would people love Adventure but hate this?
i bought an original cartridge and played it on the vcs i iherited from dad
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The PS2 version, which i think is kinda the same as the Wii version. It was my first PS2 game ever too.
I never played the others. I play with my friend overseas every Monday. He chooses the games. He may have chosen it because it is cooperative, online and not PvP. IDK.
But we also play, Aliens, Grimm Dawn, all of the borderlands games, like literally ALL of them including Tiny Tina’s Wonderland. Two is my favorite.
Deus Ex: Invisible War, and Dragon Age 2.
I liked them both. Not as good as Deus Ex 1 or DA:O, but I enjoyed and finished playthroughs of both games.
I enjoyed Dragon Age 2 as well. It’s just that it’s an action movie to Origins’ House of the Dragon. It’s just different genres.
All 5 of the dues ex games were good. And Ill die on that hill
Yoshi’s Story. Yeah it’s short, and level unlocking is weird as all outdoors, but people really hating on it for being too easy? Bro, it’s a YOSHI game. That’s a quarter of the appeal! It’s a game you can get younger kids involved in, or you can play after a hard day when you want to turn your brain off partially.
Plus almost everything in that game is adorable. And 64 bit sprite art is goated
I dunno, Yoshi’s Island can get pretty hard…
Story (N64), not Island (SNES).
I was referring to where they said
Bro, it’s a YOSHI game
Going based on the expectations set by Yoshi’s Island, one wouldn’t be off to expect challenge in Yoshi’s Story, its follow-up.
I loved Yoshi’s Story as a kid. Never knew there was hate for it for a long time.
I loved it but I was sad I completed it before the rental period was up.
Its the context and expectations. The last “Yoshi” game was a mainline Super Mario World 2, and people expected similar scope and challenge but in 64 bits. Super Mario 64 had further primed people for crazy genetlrational leaps. Yoshi’s Story was a fine game, but it wasnt SMW3 by a longshot.
Exactly this. Yoshi’s Story was a follow up to Yoshi’s Island, often considered one of the greatest 2d platformers of all time. I spent weeks if not months completing Yoshi’s Island. Then when Yoshi’s Story came out, I rented it and completed it over the weekend.
Ultima IX. I somehow never played the earlier installments despite being of the right age to have, and enjoyed the hell out of IX. In retrospect, the massive amounts of criticism were earned, I just came into it fresh and was enthralled by the world.
Diablo 4. I mean, I know it is easy, but I felt the version of Halo I played was way easy and it has a good reputation.
I’m a die hard Diablo 1-2 fan (thousands of hours in D2) and I liked D3 well enough but maybe put in 250 hours… skipped D4 entirely and I have zero regrets hahaha
I’m waiting for PoE2.
I’ve been playing the early access for it a fair bit and I think it’s gonna polish up really nicely
I wouldn’t day D4 is a good game but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. I stopped playing right after VoH came out, and the direction that expansion was taking the game didn’t interest me, but it was a fun time overall. Not a very deep game though and endgame was basically non-existent since everything falls over at that point.
