Games You Didn't Know People Hated Until The Internet

I don't know if this quite fits, but the Dualshock 3 gets a lot of hate I've never understood. The Sixaxis definitely wasn't great, but I love my dualshock. I remember people taking to it well when it first was released, but now I only ever see hate for it.

Now on to actually addressing the topic.

One of the funny things I'm noticing about alot of the games suggested so far (and this is true of my dualshock love as well I think) is that they were well received when they came out. I mean didn't GS give Chrono Cross (which has been mentioned more than once) a 10? Crysis and Doom 3, both of which @hamst3r mentioned (and I agree with him on both counts) received a 9.5 and 8.5 respectively. MGS2 is an excellent game which fully deserves the 9.6 GS gave it, yet all people seem to remember about it is Raiden.

I don't know what that's about. Are people just trying to be contrarian when they bash these great games? Has anybody else noticed this trend?

It was a tough game, but I finished it. It probably helped that I had very few games as a kid, so I played them over and over again. First time I beat the technodrome, me and a friend ran around the living room screaming and jumping, that's how hard it was :p

Only one I could think of is Super Mario Sunshine..

@mozzle: That video brought back a lot of fantastic memories.

@video_game_king: I'm honestly surprised by the donkey kong country hate, I played the hell out of that game with my friends and thought it was universally loved.

Banjo Kazooie Nuts and Bolts. I thought from the Giant Bomb review and praise that this game was one of the best 360 exclusives out there, but the rest of the internet thinks differently. Seriously, I've discovered a lot of hate for this game by looking up what other sites and classic Banjo players thought of this title.

Man, I had that game as a kid and I honestly don't think I liked it very much - probably because it kicked my ass over and over again. I just played the crap out of it because it was one of the few games I owned (we rented a lot) and... well, turtles, even though it had so little to do with the Turtles. Kudos on you for finishing it, though! I must have put hundreds of hours into that game and like the others, getting to the Turtle Van was a victory, and I never even knew the Technodrome existed.

I had no idea that Call of Duty and first-person shooters and general were considered "a problem" until the internet bandwagon started up around 2011-2012.

That attitude didn't really exist in any significant way when the site was new, I'll say that much.

MGS 2. Didn't realize people were turned off by the "Switcheroo" until the internet...last I checked it won nearly every "Game of the Year" award and got universal praise when it came out. It's still an amazing game, and one of the PS2's crowning achievements.

Donkey Kong Country. Are some people living in an alternate universe where this game wasn't the biggest thing ever? It was never as good as Mario, but it was still the best pure platformer on the snes not named Mario. People at Giant Bomb, etc act like this game wasn't a big deal, but geez this game was all anyone talked about when it came out. The graphics were also mindblowing at the time, I couldn't believe a game looked like that on Super Nintendo.

Goldeneye 64. Probably the best first-person shooter ever when it came out. It pioneered split-screen deathmatch on the television. Maybe the most influential game ever after Tetris, Pac-man, and Mario; especially when you consider what Call of Duty is today. Enough BS with that it doesn't hold up as well, because I find it holds up exceptionally well...the only difference is the control scheme which I think is really a brilliant, alternate way to control a FPS.The C button strafe system is so elegent, you can move in a buttery smooth way that's just not possible on today's console FPSs with the dual joystick setup. Before Goldeneye every FPS was called a "doom clone". C'mon now internet, it's a genius game, it changed a genre.

@tothenines: As a 6 year old, I new that TMNT was shit. All I have to say is fuck the dam level and it takes almost 3 full levels before you even sniff the Turtle Van. And Raphael is practically worthless.

I don't think there was a "bandwagon", I think it was more that people started to be fatigued by the fact that every single shooter was aping Call of Duty and that started to burn people out faster than if COD had continued to do its thing solo.

I was unaware that people didn't like Donkey Kong Country, but in the same way that Giant Bomb is so coolly dismissive of that game, I can be coolly dismissive about all those crummy early-model PS1 games that they were playing instead.

I will also throw in Nuts and Bolts. That game is fantastic, but somehow because it isn't a banjo platformer it is a betrayal of everything in the universe.

Also Sonic Adventure, except the people who talk mess about that game and its sequel are right. Sonic Adventure has aged super poorly.

@flacracker said:

For me, MGS2 veered SO much more sharply into maudlin melodrama, except at least when MGS1 did that it had zany supervillain characters I actually liked. I think basically every character introduced in MGS2 is a piece of shit. Or if they're not shitty characters, then they're about as interesting as the DARPA chief, or Kenneth Baker, or a dumpster. Seriously, you name it, Raiden, Rose, Vamp, Fortune, Fatman, Emma Emmerich, all dumb characters. Olga Gurlokovich was alright. Also Big Shell was an INCREDIBLY boring environment to set a game in.

Also, the addition of first-person aiming basically broke the gameplay of the whole series and made the whole thing piss easy because you could just headshot dudes from across the room from any elevation. I mean, they had to add that to stay relevant, but the constraints of the first MGS (where you only had free-aim for like the snipe rifle and the Stinger) meant you actually had to spend some more ammo (like 3 SOCOM bullets to his torso would kill a dude) and also had to be on the same level as him.

Also, good god, the story is so much better in MGS1 before it veered into all the dumb Patriots and SOP bullshit of the later games.

I honestly think a lot of the dislike for DKC comes from Miyamoto's comments on the game: “Donkey Kong Country proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good.” Considering how Miyamoto seems like a perfectionist and was also pressured to move Yoshi's Island towards the same pre-rendered graphics, I'm of the mind that quote isn't nearly as malicious as it sounds. Fans of DKC know it can get pretty complicated in the later levels, and the gameplay still stands out today - far from mediocre. The art style was the big talk of the time, though, and the gameplay got pushed to the side of discussions.

Nuts and Bolts was also fantastic. It's a shame people blow it off because it's not Banjo 3. Then again, those first two were pretty good.

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island

I mean I didn't think people loved it, but I thought it was liked

That's because it's shit.

I don't know if this counts, but I didn't realise Yoshi's Island wasn't just unanimously considered a goddamn classic until the bomb crew (sans Patrick) all started shitting on it last year. :P

Reviews are ultimately the opinions of those that write them. That Chrono Cross received a 10 from GameSpot doesn't mean that its quality is indisputable. I abhor that game and find it a mess narratively and conceptually. Others don't. That's just the way it is.

Darksiders 2 comes to mind as the most recent example, though maybe "hate" has to be replaced with "disappointment". Even in that case, though, I was puzzled because I thought it was fantastic and improved on almost every level from the first game.

The only areas where Darksiders 2 let me down are in its presentation of story, the short (but still totally enjoyable) final dungeon and the legitimately awful Earth/shooting section (whereas I enjoyed the couple of times you got to fire a big chain-gun type thing in the original). Other than that, yup, I thought Darksiders 2 was fucking fantastic. Improved dungeons and the combat was a huge leap. The loot system and feeding loot to other loot was also awesome. Fuck the haters. :P

Wow. And since a thread was recently bumped with a good example of what I was talking about in a previous reply, well:

Yeah, nothing "in your face" about saying people should be ashamed for liking a game that you don't. No, no. This is worse, in that it's just plain mean-spirited.

Well, considering Ocarina of Time tops more Top 10 lists than any game ever, I think it's fair to say the people that hate that game are a huge minority.

Modern interpretations of point and click adventure games.
I am tired of the constant 'what is a game' debate every single time a game like L.A. Noire, Soul Suspect or Heavy Rain comes out. These are adventure games, just because not every moment is filled with you shooting guys or knocking down a tree to collect wood does not mean it is not a game.

What the hell, my thread actually went through? I gave up after countless 404 errors and come home to see that my thread up.

Digimon World 1 and Digimon World 3 were games I enjoyed, but I could definitely see how someone would hate them when I played them. I had my own frustrations with those games at the time and should mention I never beat the former.

@bisonhero:

Don't be hating on MGS2, I love all 3 MGS games equally all for different reasons. Well, MGS3 will always be the best for me, but MGS2 and MGS1 fluctuate between rank with each other. I loved the Big Shell because of its bright orange walls and blue skied environment was such a major contrast to the sinister hostage situation going on. It was also a nice change coming off the dark and cold Shadow Moses of MGS1. And I genuinely enjoyed the story even when I couldn't understand most of it. But it made me question what was real by the end of the game. Was the Rose I was talking to the whole time just an AI? Is this all a VR simulation? Could I even trust Snake? Why the hell is the Colonel telling me to turn off the game console? I liked feeling that kind of confused paranoia. MGS2 was crazy and surreal and I genuinely enjoyed it, completely unironically.

Also if you're saying that MGS2 ruined the gameplay with first person shooting, you're saying that the best game in the series (MGS3) is not the best game in the series which is just a flat out lie. MGS4 ruined the gameplay by adding a straight up reticule and over the shoulder aiming.

Honestly, it's easy just being an MGS1 fan. You can just imagine that Snake rode off into the Alaskan sunset with Meryl or Otacon and lived a hermit life with his huskies. Being a huge fan of MGS1, 2 and 3, I have to live with the fact that MGS4 is supposed to be a good wrap up. I can argue why MGS4 is way sillier than anything in past MGS games (that mancannon was some Twin Snakes levels of bullshit right there), but I don't want to sabotage my own thread with more MGS talk.

@hailinel said:

Wow. And since a thread was recently bumped with a good example of what I was talking about in a previous reply, well:

Yeah, nothing "in your face" about saying people should be ashamed for liking a game that you don't. No, no. This is worse, in that it's just plain mean-spirited.

Haha, oh man, I feel like if you replaced Xenogears with MGS2, that might be Bisonhero's response to my post. No disrespect to you and not saying you would insult people Bisonhero, but "textbook example of when a creator with an over inflated sense of his creative prowess takes advantage of the complete freedom he's been given by hi publisher and crams every single batshit idea he's ever had into one game." sounds like an apt criticism of MGS2's story and Kojima in general. Just had to laugh at how perfectly that paragraph could be re-purposed toward me.

This might look like it won't count to some people, but it was a long time before I got the internet (like 2007). For me it's Tony Hawk's American Wasteland. To me it's still one of the best Tony Hawk games of all time. I love everything about it: the parkour, more moves with the skateboard, ability to ride BMX's, one large world, the stupid story. Once I got the internet, I realized that most reviews did not praise it, otherwise, it was considered pretty mediocre. And let's be clear here, I am talking about the PC version. Jeff gave it a 6.9 and the overall Metacritic score was 69. Also, I don't consider THPS 3 as the best game in the series, mainly due to the fact that my first game was THPS 4.

Another game I really liked but the majority didn't is True Crime: New York City. Don't really know why, but I just remember enjoying it a lot. The Metacritic score on this is 54. The bad thing is that the last time I played it, it was at least 7 years ago and I wasn't able to run it since. For some weird reason it always had insane frame rate drops on any machine that I tried to play it on. So my memories might be insanely skewed.

The nervous "haha" at the end really got me.

I did notice Jeff saying talking down on MAG during a bombcast a few weeks ago, despite himself reviewing it and giving it 4/5. I guess I'd like to add MAG to my list of games I didn't understand the hate for, seems like plenty of people think it failed at what it set out to do, but I thought it was fairly successful at just about everything but finding a sustainable player base. Sure, they could've explained the factions better, and made them more different from each other, but the actual game part of it was great in my opinion.

Mario Kart 64, Super Smash Bros, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy 7.

And Yoshi in general.

Needless to say, if you "hate" all of the above then you're one of the super cool kids.

I don't think you got the idea of the thread. He was basically asking which games you thought were good and until you read about them on the internet you found out people hated them. Fallout 3 and Skyrim both do not belong there. Skyrim is probably one of the most loved games of the past generation and Fallout 3 is not too far from it.

For me: Metal Gear Solid 2. I thought the game was awesome. Absolutely awesome. I only learned a couple years later that people thought it was trash.

I'm a huuuuge MI fan and that game is the fucking pits. I didn't find it very funny, the puzzles were pretty easy, it was ugly despite requiring a graphics card (Grim Fandango didn't) and the monkey combat was an insult to well, insult sword fighting. While MI3 didn't have the likes of Tim Schafer or Ron Gilbert working on it, it still left its mark with memorable characters, fantastic art direction, brilliant voice acting and clever puzzles. It may not have been the ideal game (Ron Gilbert did plan MI as a trilogy but left after 2) but it's still a great game in its own regard even if it doesn't have those darker moments from previous games.

i loved SA2 on my gamecube :)

I actually wrote a blog about it and my issues with DS2 compared to the first and it seemed the comments agreed.

@sbaitso said:

I didn't know that the Dualshock 3 gets a lot of hate too. The same goes to the GameCube controller, which is one of my most favorite controllers.

I used to think that everybody liked Far Cry 2 and I'm the only one who didn't get it. Strangely enough, in the hype around the release of its sequel, I came around to liking it and found out that people hated it right around the same time. Edit: maybe "hate" is too strong a word for it, but people seem to not like many things about it.

Metal Gear Solid 2 and onwards ... man the duders sure hate the wonderfulness of the MGS games D: it is distressing

YOU are shit.

Quest 64 comes to mind. I thought that game was tons of fun back then. Loved the challenge and the grind. Many others didn't and consider it terrible.

Kingdom hearts for me. It was such a blast to play years ago when it came out. I didn't care about any of the nonsense people criticise it for. It was just a fun game to play with elements of two fictional universes I enjoy.

The Pokemon games are another example. I adored those games as a kid and continue to into my adulthood.

Yea the amount of shit that JRPG's get online is just mind boggling.

Also Mario Kart 64 is the best Mario Kart game.

there isnt a certain game to mention because there is always one person who didnt like what you liked.so really the answer is every game ever made.since i dont have just one game ill just give an example.Final Fantasy 10 is my fave game in the series,and Final Fantasy 12 is my second fave.so as alot of people will know those are not the ones chosen in most cases.most people will say one of the earlier ones,but 10 and 12 were the first ones i really liked.the previous ones are good but they didnt get me playing them for 5 hours at a time.in fact im playing FF12 right now again and i still love it.so those would be the best examples for me.

Simon's Quest.

That game was fucking hard, but I thought the open-world and leveling system made it way better than the first game. Then Castlevania III came along as a fantastic hybrid of the two (much more like the first game, but at least with branching paths and hidden playable characters), but still...

The only disappointing thing was the final boss. Even back then I knew it was all down to spamming plumes of fire until you won.

Shadow the Hedgehog

Resident Evil 5

I don't. Both games have a different set up for the world. In that, it changes a lot of things. I still really like Darksiders, but I also still very much like Darksiders II. They are on equal ground for me. You blog more or less says how it's different from the first game, therefor less good. Yeah, it's different from the first game, but it's just as good.

With a world of some 7 billion people, I'm not as surprised as I used to be when people said they disliked something I had a lot of fun with. I guess the only surprise I have now is when I don't see more of it.

Like I've never seen anyone rail against Advance Wars. I'm sure those people are out there somewhere, but I guess Advance Wars is probably not popular enough to drum up those kind of intense feelings as say Jeff Gerstmann on Yoshi's Island or Nights into Dreams.

Games are super subjective, to each their own. The only games I've really hated in the many, many years would be Okamiden on the DS (for playing poorly and utterly demolishing the story) and Rhythm Heaven on the DS (for playing poorly with that flick mechanic) but that's about it.

Kingdom Hearts, Dynasty Warriors, Almost anything Jeff ruthlessly insults except Alex Kidd, apparently Mario Kart 64 (Jeff again), Donkey Kong Country, Fallout New Vegas, and many others. I dunno, I can accept valid criticism, and all of the games deserve some, but some people are flat out unreasonable or mean-spirited. And to be fair to Jeff, I try not to take it seriously, I mean, the guy likes Car games. How good can his taste be?

Beyond the Beyond. When I got my Playstation, it was part of this stack of games we got with it. Thought it was fun, considering I had a Genesis and didn't know much about JRPG's.

5.5 from Gamespot? 4 from IGN? Haters.

wait this is actually news to me because ive never heard anyone say its mediocre.in fact every time american wasteland is mentioned that ive seen, it was praised to be the best or atleast tied with underground for being the best.which is my opinion that those two are the best as well.

@sbaitso: as a person who just got into doom 3 for the first time.ive got to say i dont understand the hate either.in fact i love doom 3 alot to the point where i like it more than doom or doom 2.i also think that it could be one of my fave fps games at this point so fun.