What are some games you would describe as "offensive" or "insulting?"

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FrostyRyan

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I was thinking about the different kinds of art mediums and their differences. One thing that hit me is that it's harder to be offended or insulted by a video game than a movie, a song, a book, etc. You play a game for a little, decide you hate it, and then move away from it, right? Well songs are short and I think people typically finish even bad movies, yeah? I was wondering if there were any video games that just kind of feel like they were chemically made to bother you.

They don't have to be "offensive" in the typical sense like with racism, sexism, etc. These can be like...insulting to your intelligence. Or such a complete betrayal of what you wanted the game to be that you purely hate it.

For me, that would be Metroid Other Fucking M. Samus' character throughout her adventures was told in gameplay. It was minimal but it worked as a video game. You're a badass bounty hunter and you do your job well. End of. So when Other M comes along and has her acting like a scared little girl with men in suits literally telling her when she can use her abilities EVEN THOUGH SHE ALREADY HAS THEM, it was incredibly insulting and offensive to me as a fan of Metroid and this character who's shoes I've loved to fill throughout the series. Their first attempt at making Samus into a real, fully fleshed out character was a complete failure.

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The_Greg

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It insults me when I spend money on a video game, then I'm expected to spend more money to unlock extra shit in the game. Either make the game free-to-play and have in-game purchases, or don't.

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FacelessVixen

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Although I can probably mention a game or two on Android between 2011 and 2013 where I gave more time than I should have because I momentarily fell into that mobile gaming trap, I'm gonna go with my most hated game, Project Sylpheed, because fuck this game forever for not being the anime Star Fox that I wanted at the time.

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BoOzak

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Not to dunk on Team Ninja, they've made some of my favourite games (and continue to make good games) but Ninja Gaiden 3 was very insulting as a huge fan of the first two.

Reduced variety in weapons and enemies, dumbed down difficulty and tons of QTEs that appear seemingly out of nowhere. They fixed some of this with Razor's Edge, stuff like the story and boss fights were beyond fixing though. The other games didnt have great stories but they were ridiculous in a fun way that NG3 never reached.

I actually didnt mind Other M, I get why people hate it, the characterization of Samus was bad, but I liked the tone and thought it was a fun, yet simple action adventure game.

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Rejizzle

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From the 8 or so hours I played of it, Mass Effect: Andromeda is just the worst. The dialogue is either entirely inane and pointless, or entirely inane and incomprehensible. It really seems like the devs failed to understand basic worldbuilding, let alone what made the original trilogy work so well. Combat's pretty alright though...

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BrunoTheThird

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#6  Edited By BrunoTheThird

No Man's Sky, specifically on release day, before the updates, the drama, and nasty social media abuse Hello got. After 15 hours of naming barely-different flora and fauna, discovering and finishing banal 'quests' and mining shit, I had this sudden blast of realization. "This . . . this is it, isn't it? This is the game..." and I couldn't quite believe it.

It's a better game lately, but still a husk of the open-world, C. Clarke-esque space playground I hoped for. Subnautica gave me everything I wanted but switched space for ocean, so I'm totally okay with it being just what it is, but at the time I felt sick to my stomach from sheer flabbergastedness.

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FrostyRyan

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BrunoTheThird

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#8  Edited By BrunoTheThird

@frostyryan: Very true. At least Bethesda told us there'd be no NPCs or VATS beforehand. They basically admitted to single-player Fallout fans this was absolutely not for them. Hello did nothing but push that Sisyphean rock higher and higher with misguided marketing, unfortunately.

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liquiddragon

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#9  Edited By liquiddragon

Played through Devil May Cry 2 last year and wow, ppl were not lying!! I should've stayed away! That Dante sucks, the writing sucks, and it feels AWFUL.

I remember being really annoyed with Superhot's "spread the word" stuff at the end of the game. That is horse shit. I don't care how much it ties into the story. It was a $25 game, do not do the fucking "like and subscribe" promotion and tell ppl to tell others to buy your game.

There was a phone game called Lifeline that did a similar thing where it asks for your email at the end. Fuck that shit. I hate that.

Other than that...mmm...never played it but the performance on PS3 version of Bayonetta looked horrific based on the video I saw. Ninja Gaiden 2 for Xbox 360...that game would pause during a battle full-stop for like 2 seconds when you fights running on water in that one section. That's super insulting.

I'm not super offended but Faith from Mirror's Edge. That's the type of Asian created by a room full of non-Asians. Why does every Asian character made in the West look like Olivia Wilde from Tron Legacy. And the face tattoo? Ahh c'mon.

Last thing I can think of is Mafia 2. I love Mafia 1 and I have the opposite of love for M2. It just didn't have an original bone in its body and it was a complete rip off of various movies top to bottom. Fuck that game.

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trty0

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This was already covered by Extra Credits years ago, but the way Call of Juarez: The Cartel frames sex trafficking in the United States as evil mexicans stealing american women is a whoooooooooole lot.

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mems1224

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I found Uncharted 4 pretty insulting to my time and intelligence. That is a game I felt just absolutely refused to let you fail with any of the platforming or scripted sequences.

Felt similarly about RDR2's main missions. There are so many mechanics and tools in that game and they refuse to let you use anything other than the hyper specific things they want you to do during missions.

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ArbitraryWater

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The ending of Metal Gear Solid 4 is one of the few times I've ever been legitimately angry at a video game story. Even as a nominal fan of Kojima's bullshit, MGS 4 dialed up on the self-indulgent wankery in a way I found really hard to tolerate at times. If it didn't feel the need to resolve every lingering plot thread in the most contrived way possible I'd honestly be more okay with it, but that still leaves the part where it feels like you have an hour of cutscene for every 30 minutes of gameplay.

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deactivated-5e6e407163fd7

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@mems1224:I feel like the Uncharted series has told everyone to not come to it looking for stakes in its game play, and that game is the only one of the series (up until that point) that justified its mediocre game play with characters and story. So I feel like you expecting more from it is more you than it. I would also say Rockstar has similarly informed it's game playing audience that its story missions are super linear. The frustration for that one is more understandable though because the rest of the game is so at odds with those design choices.

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Onemanarmyy

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The PS3 version of skyrim. Once your savegame starts to get a bit too big, loading takes several minutes. Eventually, the game will just start to lock up on you at random moments. Never got to finish it because of this.

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mems1224

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@sloppydetective: yea, I guess I just felt like UC4 went to that well way more because there were far less combat encounters. It was the first time I've ever forced myself to finish a game I hated lol.

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FrodoBaggins

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Guardians of Middle Earth.

FUCK that game.

FUCK the company that made it.

FUCK Sony for not giving me a full refund and an apology.

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Pezen

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I actually wish more games had 'offensive' or provoking content in the way other mediums seem to have. It seems like games are created with a lot fewer barriers to entry for it's audience, genre tastes aside. And the few times people are offended seems less intentional and more just a general disagreement over attributes rather than someone intentionally creating something to elicit a reaction.

On the other hand, I am personally incredibly hard to offend. At worst I might shake my head at scantily clad women in games where that seems ill-fitting in general. But I honestly can't think of a game that I felt were actually offensive or insulting. If a game felt like it didn't respect my time or otherwise wasted my time or energy I have probably forgotten it by now.

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BladeOfCreation

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Any game that ends with an admonishment of the player's actions that is meant to break the fourth wall.

From what I've seen and read of the Far Cry games, several of the games have done this. The Walking Dead Season 1 has a character in the final episode that judges the player's actions regardless of what those were. Choices that I specifically made to be "good" were criticized because I didn't stop the NPCs in the party from doing them (the choice was only dialogue and was not an action). That, to me, is lazy writing. It reeks of a first-year philosophy student thinking that they're far more clever than they actually are.

Spec Ops: The Line does this in a way that I found incredibly upsetting at the time. The developers said that "not playing" was a valid ending. Which just...no. Fuck that lazy bullshit. In the end, that game was a flawed exploration of combat PTSD that would've been far better without the absurd moralizing.

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The_Greg

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@rejizzle: God, that game. The moment-to-moment gameplay is ok and the environments are cool, sort of. Aside from that, what the hell?

The characters and dialogue are beyond atrocious and it seems to get worse every time I revisit it. Genuinely gutting.

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wollywoo

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#20  Edited By wollywoo

@mems1224 said:

Felt similarly about RDR2's main missions. There are so many mechanics and tools in that game and they refuse to let you use anything other than the hyper specific things they want you to do during missions.

Thanks for confirming that. Now I don't have to bother to play it. That's why I don't like Rockstar games - every one is like Disneyland, an amazing, impressive world where you just go from one on-rails thrill-ride to another. The worldbuilding is great, but the actual gameplay is so devoid of freedom that it always loses my interest. If they took a page or two from RPG's, throwing out the "missions" and giving you a proper quest log, meaningful choices, etc., I would like their games a lot better.

As for offensive games... well, I don't really see how an "offensive game" here is different from "a game I don't like." Personally I'm pretty offended by Hearthstone's constant lag and disconnects.

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The_Nubster

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I remember being really annoyed with Superhot's "spread the word" stuff at the end of the game. That is horse shit. I don't care how much it ties into the story. It was a $25 game, do not do the fucking "like and subscribe" promotion and tell ppl to tell others to buy your game.

I remember really hating that part, and then being way more bothered that everyone bought into "IT'S THE MOST INNOVATIVE SHOOTER I'VE PLAYED IN YEARS" and unironically parroted it for months after it came out. Even members of the staff on this site were saying it without mentioning that it was a phrase ginned up by the game. The developers went hard on creating a meme out of their not-story and it fucking worked.

Also, Superhot was $35 Canadian. It was about an hour and a half long. Superhot was not an okay product.

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TobbRobb

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I tried to play Sundered when it came out. On paper it should be very appealing to me, I love metroidvania, 2D combat games, handdrawn art, good music.

But oh my god that game is so awful. It's maybe the most disappointed I've ever been. Even having pretty lax expectations on the gameplay, I just can't believe how LAZY it feels. It's like they didn't even TRY to make a game out of it. Enemies have no pathing so they just fly and shoot through all walls. They run you down in a straight line completely mindlessly. They only have one attack per enemy and they come in HUGE clusterfuck swarms on a timer, not matter where you are. GOD this game upset me so much.

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Creigz

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Duke Nukem Forever was an insult to my wallet. There have been some bad titles over the years that I've played. I really do try my best to find something good to say about every game I play but that is one of the very very short list of games I can't say anything worthwhile that I enjoyed.

I felt that Final Fantasy XIII was a bit frustrating. It was on rails for a whole disc (I had it on the 360) and then I swap discs and start playing some more, it throws me onto an open world with no signs of story progression in sight and a 30 hour grind after my 30 hours already put in. I know jRPG's have a grind but that was just insulting.

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nutter

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#25  Edited By nutter

I didn’t like Ghost Recon making the GRAW turn all those years ago...it felt dumbed down. But I wouldn’t call it insulting, they just went broader.

I more often find movies insulting of the audience’s intelligence, and VERY frequently feel that way about television. Games...I figure the audience is so broad that I don’t think about it so much.

I think forced happy endings in film is the most insulting thing media does. When you see a film and there’s a clear discongruence between the film and the ending, and you look it up and, sure enough, they changed the ending to one that makes no thematic sense, but IT’S HAPPIER, that annoys me.

See Get Out, The Descent, and Bird Box (though the book’s ending wouldn’t have saved that film from being disappointing), and countless others.

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sweep

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#26 sweep  Moderator

Not sure if this was the intention, but when I hear "insulting" I interpret that as something which is disrespectful to me as a player, or is communicating a message which runs counter to my principles and beliefs in a way which I think is harmful and/or malicious. There are plenty of shitty and/or disappointing games out there which are fucking terrible but aren't insidiously propagating a certain message or way of thinking which I believe to be harmful or offensive. For example I notice someone above has mentioned Mass Effect Andromeda - sure that game had a lot of issues, and it's fair enough to say that a lot of people felt disappointed that one of their favorite franchises was not receiving the attention to detail they believe it deserved, but at the same time that game was largely harmless in terms of the story and messages that it was exploring.

I think the most frequent insult to me personally is the assumption that we as players are mindless idiots, frequently represented in terrible writing. I love the gameplay in Gears Of War for example, but the logic and canon of that franchise is fucking moronic, and the idea that we're just supposed to roll with it and look past it has always pissed me off.

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Rejizzle

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@sweep said:

I notice someone above has mentioned Mass Effect Andromeda - sure that game had a lot of issues, and it's fair enough to say that a lot of people felt disappointed that one of their favorite franchises was not receiving the attention to detail they believe it deserved, but at the same time that game was largely harmless in terms of the story and messages that it was exploring.

Yeah, that was me. The OP specified the topic as: "insulting to your intelligence. Or such a complete betrayal of what you wanted the game to be that you purely hate it." So I took 'insulting' to mean having an irrational or overly critical opinion of a game, such that you perceive it as an insult. I think that's kinda what they meant.

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soulcake

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I would describe Agony as a waste of my money and time and "dumb" and definitely offensive to some people that game yell's edge lord all over.

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stantongrouse

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Thankfully, watching a lot of the GB stuff means I probably have a better idea if a game is going to insult me in some way, shape or form before I commit to buying it. But, days of yore time, it used to be when a box or advert for a game so blatantly sold a game as something vastly different from what it was, or used screen shots from a totally different version of the game. I was stung so many times as a youth from that. I know the practice of mis-selling is still alive and well, it's just there is an internet now and that removes the potential of me falling foul of it. It makes me wonder how long the "most disappointing/worst surprise" type category can go on the GOYT, even this year the team seemed to be finding it harder and harder to not say, "well we knew it was a train wreck before we even got it."

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wardcleaver

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Any game that ends with an admonishment of the player's actions that is meant to break the fourth wall.

From what I've seen and read of the Far Cry games, several of the games have done this. The Walking Dead Season 1 has a character in the final episode that judges the player's actions regardless of what those were. Choices that I specifically made to be "good" were criticized because I didn't stop the NPCs in the party from doing them (the choice was only dialogue and was not an action). That, to me, is lazy writing. It reeks of a first-year philosophy student thinking that they're far more clever than they actually are.

Spec Ops: The Line does this in a way that I found incredibly upsetting at the time. The developers said that "not playing" was a valid ending. Which just...no. Fuck that lazy bullshit. In the end, that game was a flawed exploration of combat PTSD that would've been far better without the absurd moralizing.

I completely agree with your post.

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Jesus_Phish

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#31  Edited By Jesus_Phish

@tobbrobb: I've actually just started playing that, the GOTY version or something that came with Humble Bundle. I've beaten one boss and died a few times and got some upgrades. I just got the double jump. But I think I'm already kind of over it. The game looks nice, although sometimes the enemies and the backgrounds do not mix well at all. Specifically the sentry guys that fire a laser at you, off screen, through walls.

The combat is just incredibly boring. The "Finisher" is laughably bad. I'm not sure I can keep going with it and reading what you've said I'll probably drop it sooner rather than later. The timer thing is really dumb too. It really ruins the exploration of the game because you just end up in a tedious battle every so often.

I don't know if this counts, but I found Brothers to be kind of an insulting waste of my time. Though I mostly attribute that to the game being so dramatically hyped with people claiming it moved them to tears. I don't want to dis-barrage anyone, but the big brother dying felt like the most obvious thing in the world. And then his "ghost" or whatever being a part of your journey home made me feel like I'd just played an entire 4 or 5 hours of game just so some developer could put that one little trick moment into his game. I honestly have no idea why that game gets so much praise which is why it confuses me even more that people expected A Way Out to be anything other than what it was. I felt the same way, even more so with Limbo. Limbo felt cheap and unearned and like it was wasting my time and it was the first game I finished despite hating.

But the most insulting thing I can think of is when a game just decides to M. Bison you. When the difficultly just ramps up to an 11 from a 5 or a 6 for no real reason. What a monumental waste of everyone's time.

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SunSpark

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I felt this way about the first Life is Strange. The dialogue and characters were so terribly written that it actually made me angry. I have a similar reaction to any time internet slang or memes appear in video games. It always feels like a desperate attempt to keep up with the times, and it always makes a game feel dated almost immediately.

I have similar feelings about Undertale, a game where I found all the characters to be really unsympathetic. It tries to justify why all the monsters in that game hate humans, but I didn't feel like it was doing a good enough job and the fact that the characters didn't seem to have much of a problem attempting to kill a child, and then berated the player for killing them in self-defense, turned me off the game big time. I found that pretty insulting to my intelligence and morals.

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Humanity

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#33  Edited By Humanity

Most recently I suppose I've had this hate/love relationship with Below

I've put 14 hours into that game, and got weirdly invested in beating it - but like literally beating the game itself, as in not letting it beat me. What I found "insulting" were certain gameplay decisions that actively waste the players time. There was a moment where after a long battle I had finally cleared this rather difficult area and opened up the shortcut so I can skip past it. I decided to take a break before going forward and finish up another part of the map, only to see upon my return a while later that the shortcut I had unlocked earlier was now gone, inactive. I had to check the forums because I simply could not believe that the shortcut would disappear after you die, especially that shortcut which circumvents arguably one of the worst and imbalanced parts of the entire game. Well no, they weren't that sadistic, it's just a game bug that made it disappear which in a way is worse because there is a chance a patch won't fix it.

That aside, this game seems so at odds with what it wants you to do, and seems to stretch the gametime out through it's variously arduous and monotonous mechanics that at times it did feel a little insulting. You don't learn anything new from your mistakes in Below - you are typically harshly punished for the slightest error and your only course of action for the future is to not do that one thing again. You might have farmed for an hour, gathered materials, crafted resources, and then 4 floors deep into the worst dungeon in the game walk too close to a spike trap and die instantly irregardless of equipment or health. This very same dungeon, the worst in the game, doesn't allow for backtracking out of it. Each floor is a one way trip to the one below it. If you find yourself short on water and dying of dehydration then there is no going back - you will simply have to push forward until you eventually die.

There are other problems with it, as well as equally fascinating and fun elements, but mostly I felt like my time was being wasted when there was no reason for it.

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Casepb

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#34  Edited By Casepb

Not any one game does stuff like this but, super hand holding tutorials kind of insult me. The crap that says "reminder use the right trigger to accelerate" while I'm currently accelerating by pressing the damn button.... Is this seriously needed? Also when it tells you to move the left stick to control your character.... stuff like that is just painful to even see in games these days because these types of controls have been around since N64 and PS1 days.

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MerxWorx01

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I don't hold any lasting dislike for it but Final Fantasy 13 and the corridor layout of the entire world still holds the candle for moment to moment bafflement. Every time there was a split in the map I would think "this is where the game opens up" and running into a dead end leaves me wondering why they decided this.

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berfunkle

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I would never use the term "offensive" or "insulting" to describe any game.

If they're boring, I don't play them.

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MobiusFun

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No mention of The Quiet Man? I guess GB successfully prevented everyone from buying it.

I was also really pissed at SUPERHOT's "spread our memes!" ending after a mere two hours. I really considered refunding it but didn't for whatever reason. I think I convinced myself that I would go back to it someday and see if there was some sort of secret ending or hidden content, but I never touched it again.

I think I got the most irrational at Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. I was a big fan of Penumbra and the first Amnesia, and somehow missed the part where The Chinese Room was developing the sequel. I don't remember much about the game other than an ugly blue filter, some lame generic-ass video game puzzles, silly writing (the only line I remember from the game is "We're all the pigs now professor! *evil laugh* *death noises*), and an even sillier final boss which looked like something from Quake 4. Thinking back, it sounds more like Frictional Games fan fiction. I hated it so much I skipped SOMA, it damaged my trust in Frictional's judgement. Years later I would watch a lets play of SOMA and find out it was pretty rad. Whoops!

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Busto1299

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#38  Edited By Busto1299

I fucking hate the Tomb Raider reboot. It feels like a bunch of basic ideas copied from every other game that barely stick around much longer after they are introduced. I do not mind a linear or slightly hand guided experience in games but this game treats you like an absolute fool. Never been so bored and and angry at a game.

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FinalDasa

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#39 FinalDasa  Moderator

Depends on what you think is insulting or offensive I guess.

Most fighting games that feature extra skimpy outfits or excessive boob physics I think are insulting to video game players intelligence. As if fighting games couldn't or wouldn't be exciting and fun without a layer of sex and skin. There's a difference between being dressed in proper clothing for a fight and being Ivy.

Playing through Soul Calibur 6 recently reminded me how far games have come and how far they really need to go.

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Casepb

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Depends on what you think is insulting or offensive I guess.

Most fighting games that feature extra skimpy outfits or excessive boob physics I think are insulting to video game players intelligence. As if fighting games couldn't or wouldn't be exciting and fun without a layer of sex and skin. There's a difference between being dressed in proper clothing for a fight and being Ivy.

Playing through Soul Calibur 6 recently reminded me how far games have come and how far they really need to go.

Never understood the problem with showing some T&A on games. It's just harmless fun.

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FrostyRyan

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@finaldasa: Well those games are ultra stylized and aren't concerned with "being dressed for a fight"

Character designs would be very boring if they all tried to be realistic in fighting games

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clagnaught

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That alien tentacle scene always rubbed me the wrong way in Duke Nukem Forever....in addition to all of the other baggage and dumb stuff that's in that game has.

This is to a minor degree--let's say half insulting of my intelligence. I generally like Detroit: Become Human, but man that game sure loves going off the track and doing something dumb when I don't want it to.

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FinalDasa

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#43 FinalDasa  Moderator

@casepb: It serves no purpose. Why does it exist? This isn't the mid-90s when every company assumed only 12 year old boys liked video games. I understand that sometimes characters will be sexy or sexual, but when you're making every character that it feels hollow and pointless. I play fighting games to play a fighting game, not to watch watered down porn.

@frostyryan That's just an example. My point is I don't think there's a real need to have every or most women be dressed up like bad Halloween outfit versions of themselves.

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Jesus_Phish

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#45  Edited By Jesus_Phish
@finaldasa said:

@casepb: It serves no purpose. Why does it exist? This isn't the mid-90s when every company assumed only 12 year old boys liked video games. I understand that sometimes characters will be sexy or sexual, but when you're making every character that it feels hollow and pointless. I play fighting games to play a fighting game, not to watch watered down porn.

Here's the ugly secret. The developers of games like the SC series aren't sitting around going "What would a 12 year old boy like to see in this game?" but are sitting around going "What would Iwant to see in this game?". It's the same with comic books. The 30 year old artists drawing sexy lady characters in skimpy clothing aren't doing it for their nephews, they're doing it because there's a demographic of adult men (and probably women) out there who are still super into that.

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FrodoBaggins

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And it's also worth saying there's nothing wrong with it either.

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FinalDasa

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#47 FinalDasa  Moderator

@jesus_phish: That's contradictory. Are the artists doing it for themselves or for the demographics who buy the games?

I highly doubt massive million dollar projects are created solely on the whims of what the artists, or director, or producers want. For one, video games are massively collaborative. Second, games are often created by large companies, who have to appease their publishers, who have to appease console creators and publishing platforms.

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Jesus_Phish

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#48  Edited By Jesus_Phish

@finaldasa: My main point is rather, stop blaming horny pre-teens. Blame horny adults if you feel like you need to blame someone.

My secondary point would be - the artists, developers, directors etc. who make such art, such comics or such video games can very well, and probably do very well, enjoy the content of their products. I doubt Brian Pulido sits down to draw Lady Death and thinks to himself "I wish I didn't have to draw this sexy lady".

Luckily for publishers, sex sells, so it's not difficult to convince them that if they put out a game of women in bikinis that it'll do well.

Tomonobu Itagaki has a style, there's no way that dude didn't enjoy the process of working on and creating Dead or Alive back in the mid-90s and what the series really started to lean into.

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FinalDasa

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#49 FinalDasa  Moderator

@jesus_phish: I'm not blaming anyone except the people who think these designs are the only way to sell games.

I'm sure there are developers who enjoy creating and adding these designs to their work, and that's fine, but it's hard to believe every developer wants to see yet another barely clothed woman in their game.

Sex sells might be true, but it doesn't have to be the rule games, or any media, lives by. Tomb Raider reinvented itself and took a normally over sexualized character and made her more real and based off of a reality. Not everything needs to go after sex just because it can.

I don't know why this argument stems to comics or specific artists. I'm not belittling every dev or game or studio or publisher who ever decided to put a shorter skirt in their game. I just wish we reflected on it more, asked ourselves why it exists and if it needs to more, instead of just shrugging it off and accepting it as the constant norm.

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#50  Edited By Jesus_Phish

@finaldasa: But that's not every game any more? Dead or Alive and Soul Caliber continuing to put women in skimpy clothing is the same as water being wet. Blizzard get some flak these days because the majority of their female characters are basically the same body shape, slim, young and white. But they're not putting them in revealing clothes.

You're right, they don't have to do it, but they want to do it, and if they want to do it, let them do it. They're not 100% of games media, not by a long shot anymore.

I'm honestly drawing a blank here, but outside of Dead or Alive/Soul Caliber and to a much lesser degree Nier last year - what game is putting a lady on the box and trying to sell it based on sex? Ignore Steam-trash for the purpose of the question.