Games You Didn't Know People Hated Until The Internet

What's a game you enjoyed as a kid that you didn't know people hated until you started posting on the internet?

For me it's:

Dynasty Warriors. I can see how people would be burned out on the series and maybe I got into it late (around DW3) but Dynasty Warriors is a great split screen co-op game to play with a friend.

Metal Gear Solid 2. The Raiden switcheroo really didn't bother me that much. I really wish more games would introduce new protagonists into their games instead of sticking with one iconic mascot. The codec calls and Raiden's character were all fine to me.

Chrono Cross. I played Chrono Cross first and I initially bought it because "hey this looks like it could be like a cool Final Fantasy-ish game." I really enjoyed it. I can see how it would be a disappointing sequel, but I think it's a good game on its own.

Really, JRPGs in general I didn't know had so much disdain directed at them. But I don't know if people hated them when they were released or if the internet just amplified the hate. Like, everyone expressing their love of FF7 with tons of fan art, avatars, signatures, music videos, xXSephirothXx names. And the people who didn't care for the genre felt the need to push back even harder against the people saying how much they liked it.

You were surprised that people hated Dynasty Warriors? My family always complained when i played it, particularly due to the bad voice acting and annoying repetitive sounds

"CAN ANYBODY PROVIDE ME WITH A DECENT CHALLENGE

CAN ANYBODY PROVIDE ME WITH A DECENT CHALLENGE

CAN ANYBODY PROVIDE ME WITH A DECENT CHALLENGE"

still love it though

Kingdom Hearts. As a kid the real time action was the best I had played and thought it was just the bees knees (still do really) but man do people hate that series haha

Maybe it's just that rascal Jeff Gerstmann, but I've discovered a surprising amount of disdain for Donkey Kong Country.

TMNT for the NES. I mean I loved it as a kid. And then I watch unprofessional friday and learned that the crew unanimously thinks the game is shit. =/

Um... I don't know about games, but I didn't know people hated Neelix from Star Trek. Kind of topic, but, yeah.

@minipato: Granted the game did get high scores (one of GameSpot's tens), but yeah, I've heard people dislike it as well.

I played that for years as a kid! Fuck the haters :p

I guess recently, Mario Kart 64? Before the MK8 quick look I had no idea it apparently had so much hate aimed towards it. I remember playing it as a kid and being blown away at seeing all the mario characters rendered in 3d.

Final Fantasy VIII. I still think it's one of the best Final Fantasy games out there - right behind FF9. People have good points about the story being cheesy, but that's par for the course for Final Fantasy games. I never played FF7 to completion, but I just looked up a synopsis... Bizzaro-Sephiroth is a thing?! I'm not hating, but don't tell me that's any better than FF8's stupidity. =P

Still a better love story than Twilight.

Uhm ... every game?!
Before the internet I was still naive and (first and foremost) young enough to maintain the belief that surely some things exist which are universally cherished. Like, no exceptions and all. That changed, obviously.

Mario Kart 64. I mean what's not to like? I think Jeff talking about it was the first time I ever heard negative words about MK64.

Escape from Monkey Island.

I really enjoyed it and it got me into the series, but everyone seems to hate the story and controls.

Dynasty Warriors is the shit.

Uh... Well my forum career started like 17-18 years ago so I don't know. Some random SNES game from before then? Tobal No. 1? Shadow Madness? King Arthur's World?

Kingdom Hearts. I guess if you're a certain age it just looked like something you'd hate. I love those games.

@onno10: That doesn't count. My family would probably find any game annoying. My sis would always make us play on the lowest possible volume regardless of game, and Kingdom Hearts made me dad genuinely pissed! (well Kingdom Hearts is a terrible game but that is aside the point)

Not quite the same, but I didn't realize that people still hold the original Mega Mans in such high regard, when Mega Man X 1 and 2 are clearly the pinnacle of the whole Mega Man franchise.

So I guess I'm surprised that so many people disregard the Mega Man X series. Nobody outright hates it, but seriously, I don't entirely get why the NES entries are still cherished above those first couple Mega Man X games.

Also, I liked Donkey Kong 64. It wasn't really a Donkey Kong game (no idea how you would make it feel like DKC without making something with smallish environments like Super Mario 3D Land), but DK64 is still a pretty good Rare 3D platformer.

Deus Ex: Invisible War. It doesn't stand up to the first one but... it's not that bad you guys.

@bisonhero: Mega Man X is fucking awesome.

For me it was more like the internet just confirmed or showed me the people who disliked certain games that I liked or were generally highly regarded. I can't really remember any specific examples but I'd probably just attribute to pretty much all the games that I've played or have some familiarity with despite not playing or only playing it briefly (e.g. demo, in a friends house, etc.) in general.

No, that's been around for a while. In fact, there were rumors shortly after release that Shigeru Miyamoto panned the game under the logic, "Americans like dumb shit." Those rumors were wrong, by the way.

I'm pretty sure the Bombcrew (primarily Jeff and Brad, Vinny just seems indifferent) are just super biased towards all of the popular local multiplayer games of that era. By the mid-to-late 90s they were all grown-ass adults who could pay for internet and a gaming PC, so they were playing Quake or UT or whatever. Basically none of them give a shit about MK64, Goldeneye, Smash Bros., Halo 1, etc. Or they just dislike most N64 games that aren't Ocarina of Time or Super Mario 64, I can't tell.

So mad props to Drew for liking Halo, and Alex for generally being a reasonable dude who doesn't irrationally dislike a bunch of classic multiplayer games. Not that I think Mario Kart as a series is the pinnacle of innovation, but c'mon, Super Mario Kart has so many issues, from the retardedly unfair singleplayer to the fairly bland Mode 7 tracks.

In the same way that most of the design ideas of NES Zelda were discarded and the handful of good ideas were distilled when they made Link to the Past, I'd argue the same thing happened between Super Mario Kart and MK64.

Ocarina of Time

Growing up pretty much everyone I talked to, or hell even ran into, thought that game was pretty great. Then, years later I see people on the internet spitting a ton of hate towards that game and it blew my mind. But then I learned the internet is just full of surly bastards in general.

Rush 2 - I thought everyone thought that was the greatest game ever. I mean finding all the keys in each track, which unlocked cars for that track is a bitchin' idea. Great sense of speed, so many shortcuts and jumps, it had everything. Also, Stunt Course!

And fantastic music.

Crysis, sure it reviewed extremely well but there's a lot of people who didn't have the machines capable of running it that led to them hating it. Also Donkey Kong Country doesn't seem to have impressed the Giant Bomb and 8-4 guys which I have fond nostalgia for.

Maybe it doesn't count because the internet was totally around but I had no idea the story of Far Cry 3 was so reviled until I happened upon a group of people talking about it on the internet a few weeks ago.

Definitely Metal Gear Solid 2. I personally didn't mind Raiden being the main character for most of the game back when I first played it.

I don't think people who dislike JRPGs are even that in-your-face about it, though. Mostly I see people dismiss the genre casually and the fans freak the fuck out because, like you said, they're so invested in those games that they do all the fan art fanfics and stuff.

You're right about Chrono Cross, though. That game was pretty solid and the online reaction against it is totally based on it not living up to the expectations set by Chrono Trigger. It's the exact same reason for online negativity aimed at Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

The Sonic Adventure games.

That's a pretty good one for me too. My friends still really like it. And I think that 'favorite Mario Kart is your first Mario Kart' theory might apply pretty well to the casual audience. And even though I totally recognize that it's not the best Mario Kart (DS, if I'm trying to be objective), I think it's a pretty damn good kart racer from that era. The balance kind of sucks, and it is kind of filled with those weird tricks that N64 era Nintendo games seemed to be filled with that, if you know them and are playing against people who don't, it kind of ruins the game. But, approached from the way most people are going to be playing it, not competitively, but rather as a party game, it pretty much gives you exactly what you want. Goofy, memorable courses, a good selection of Nintendo icons, and straight forward controls. The battle mode is also totally legit.

MGS2 is a really good example of this. First played it when it first came out for Xbox (Substance) and was kind of thrilled at the weird direction they took and it ended up becoming one of my all time favorite games. My first time through that game as a 14 year old consistently blew my mind because no game before it had come close to that level of storytelling.

The time before the internet was pretty magical. You could enjoy, seriously, almost any game without some random dipshit telling you how shitty your taste was.

I don't know how anyone could hate MGS2 and love MGS1. It is the opposite for me. Except for the story, I think MGS1 is a piece of annoying shit.

I think it had a lot to do with the other games you were playing at the time. I really liked Banjo Kazooie, the GB guys think it's crap, but then it I wasn't playing every game that was coming out back then so my experience was tarnished by constant comparisons to other games.

This would have to be my answer too. It was quite shocking to say the least especially when you take into account how they gave us some of the best music to ever be in any video game ever.

HOW COULD ANYONE NOT LOVE THIS?

Pretty much this. I didn't like the original Super Mario Kart, but MK64 is one of my favorite N64 games, and one of the few on that platform I can and do regularly play even today.

Chrono Cross is definitely one of them. It was one of my favorite RPGs from the PS1 era and I have nothing but positive memories for it. Finding out that so many people hate it because it wasn't Chrono Trigger 2 was a sad day.

It's not like my opinion of games changes at all just because some people don't like it, and I do enjoy talking about games I like with other people, but I do miss the days when my perceptions and experiences with a game were purely my own. Part of me has to wonder if that plays a large part in nostalgia for old games.

So yeah, the internet ruins everything.

It's a combination of both. You get the worst fans and the worst detractors in the same room together and a shouting match is the result. Not all JRPG fans are the rabid internet parody and not all detractors are level-headed or knowledgeable about the genre. You personally say that people that dislike JRPGs aren't in-your-face about it, but I recall seeing posts from you personally that prove that overly simplistic notion simply is not true.

Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. I thought that was a great game when I was a kid. Then I read some comments about it online and went back to replay it. Holy shit that game is terrible! Thanks, Internet!

that game made me cry as a kid. FUCK. THAT. GAME.

I wasn't aware people hated Chrono Cross until a couple months ago. I thought that was another FFVII/Chrono Trigger type game where pretty much everyone loved it.

Mario Kart 64 is another one. Though honestly the only person I've ever really seen dislike this game greatly is Jeff.

@ripelivejam:


It probably help forge you as a person, you should be appreciative if anything else.. yeah.

@creepingdeath0: All of this. SNES MKart is good but I figured everyone thought 64 was better. Its all those older people that hate 64, real people know that 64 has the best tracks in the series.

One thing that surprised me years later was that apparently the PS1 did quite well and I didn't know. Everyone I knew had a 64 and loved it so I thought it was the best selling system period. I was in elementary school so I didn't know but I was surprised the 64 did poorly compared to the PS1.

Mario Kart 64 - It's the best Mario Kart. This isn't a case of the "your first is your favorite" theory that Jeff has either, because my first was the first game, Super Mario Kart - which was amazing, no doubt - but then 64 came out and it was WAY BETTER.

Crysis - The first Crysis was fantastic, whereas Crysis 2 sucked shit. All the reasons I've heard people use to assert that the second game is superior are the exact reasons why I consider it worse.

Trespasser - Yes, the controls were incredibly clunky. The one-armed walking pair of breasts protagonist was ridiculous. The dinosaurs moved around like they were made out of water balloons and elastic. It was nearly impossible to shoot anything, let alone keep ahold of your gun. All that said, the game had a wonderful sense of desolation and dread which I really got into. I found it thoroughly enjoyable once I got used to how it played.

DOOM 3 - I've heard a lot of negativity towards Doom 3, about it not being as fast-paced and frantic as Doom 1 and 2, how it's too dark and moody, etc. I think that's all up to play style and interpretation though. For me, for the majority of their duration, DOOM 1 and 2 were also slow, dark, and moody games. I walked around their levels, unsettled by the demonic sounds and flickering lights. They were horror games to my young mind. So when Doom 3 rolled around, it was exactly what I wanted out of a new Doom game!

Fallout 3. Until I played fallout 2 and discovered what the no mutants allowed dudes thought of that game, it was one of the my all time favorites of that generation. I had a similar experience with skyrim, after you started to really dig deep into those games, you discovered that they are very wide ponds with a lot of content, that are actually very shallow and void of any true depth that make them meaningful.

What a great topic. This is what is so great about the internet, and also not so great about the internet in general. You can find opinions that reinforce your views so easily, and at the same time have some of your most closely held opinions spit and trampled on. It makes you reevaluate why your thinking the way you do in both scenarios if your the type that cares why you like stuff.

I will never understand why FFVII is remember with such disdain by people who played it at the time. I am also guilty of FFVIII bashing if that puts dumb ideas into context.

Another game I would like to offer on this list is The Dig. That game was the shit.

I always thought Sonic 3 was the best Sonic game. Who knew I was wrong?

Fucking underwater dam level, dude. I think I only ever got past it two or three times.

I must still be in the dark regarding people's dislike towards this series. I was under the impression that it was a series that a LOT of people liked and generally got very good reviews with nearly every game.

Crysis and Doom 3 were both pretty well received I thought.

Man, you're nuts if you thought Mario Kart 64 was the best. The best one was the one released for the DS a few years back. Trespasser I can't speak for, but I watched a LP of it on Youtube, and I KNOW that if I played that back in 1997-8, my seven or eight year old self would have freaking LOVED it.

Edit: Oh, I misinterpreted the title of the thread, I was thinking that it was games that were negatively received by a lot of people, not games that just have people that dislike them.

Same. Even getting to the point where you can drive the Turtle Van in that game should count as a victory. I never even got close to the Technodrome.

I think all three times I got past it I was down to 1-2 turtles and died on that first top-down driving screen.