What do you think is the most overrated game/franchise?

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Let's just say, at least for me, Undertale is the most overrated game of the decade. I played 20 minutes, thought it was stupid the entire time, hated the characters, dreaded the amount of reading I had to do, and dropped it. Then I proceeded to hear about it constantly for 6 months, leading to an extremely embarrassing public meltdown because my friends kept thinking I was still interested in it. I could see myself MAYBE getting into it YEARS down the road, but no, it had to becoming a freaking meme and attract everyone who thinks the only thing a game should be is a story. And the soundtrack, good lord, is so freaking pretentious, almost as much as the fans.

My biggest problem with Undertale though was the fans. My friends just automatically assumed I liked it because I'm a nerd who likes video games. After a few confusing in jokes and an exclusionary facebook chat group between my friends, I just grew fed up with the same people who claimed they weren't a part of the fandom. Also, If I wanted something desolate, I'd visit Klamath Falls, Oregon again.

You kinda sound a bit like me... the rare sort of gamer that actually DOESNT think games should be all about story. I dunno about you, but I tend to avoid story-focused games like the plague. There are occaisional exceptions (well, really rare exceptions actually) but for the most part... if I'm playing something either A: it has a story that I havent been paying any attention to, or B: it has no story at all.

I mean, I dont mind lots of reading.... in books, that is. I dont play games to READ the bloody things, or WATCH them. If I'm playing a game, I expect to play the blasted thing. I also dont want it to just hand me victories (by being exceedingly easy) just to guarantee I get to see some stupid storyline. Tend to stick to challenging stuff. RPGs are the genre I understand the least. I just... I dont get the appeal. Never will. Either jRPGs, or games like freaking Skyrim. Just dont get it.

That being said, I'll offer one big piece of advice: When dealing with ANY game that may be even SLIGHTLY popular... do not go anywhere near the fans. Period. Just dont even look their way, acknowledge them, or anything like that.

Hell, dont go near the fans of entire GENRES in some cases. Like fighting games. Never go near that group. Just... just dont.

I think the entire genre of first-person shooters has become somewhat overrated in the last several years. It was revolutionary when 'Doom' and 'Quake' and 'Half-Life' came out, but nowadays they over-saturate the market while the meteoric rise of indie games hearken a distinct return to story and puzzle-based gaming with great success. I personally think the gaming market is growing tired of shooting things and we'll be seeing a gradual move away from 'Call of Duty' and back into adventure and RPGs.

I'm curious, how can a soundtrack be "pretentious"? That's not a word I often hear describing musical scores. I thought it was quite typical for its genre.

Personally, I'm ambivalent towards 'Undertale'; I think it has some great concepts and clever game mechanics, but I never quite bought into the hype surrounding it. Being that I'm not much of an RPG fan, I never even actually played it myself, only watched several playthroughs of it to follow the story and see what all the fuss was about. I harbor no ill-will towards those who love it, but it's not something I'll remember myself a few years down the line.

I say don't play it if you're not into the kind of thing. Sorry for lashing out at the soundtrack, I probably just associate the soundtrack with my friends gushing about how awesome it is (further disinteresting me away from the game, my stupid mind loves making me a hipster), when as you said, it's typical for it's genre.

For me, it's personally more of a distaste in "nostalgia pandering" by using chiptune-like sounds to make a soundtrack sound more "retro". I study music composition, so I tend to be a little picky at how things are composed. For example, I stray away from pop music mostly because today's pop isn't taking advantage of the entire fullness of music that brought me in. I personally like when a whole bank of sounds are used in just the right way, and you can pick out all the melodies an countermelodies that you might hear in one piece, as well as it being well balanced. For good examples of composition in my opinion, check out Civ VI's America theme, Vesuvius by Frank Ticheli, Decretum from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley, and Power by Kanye West.

Going chiptune, while it makes sense for Undertale's aesthetic, doesn't really fit into what kind of music I like. So my disinterest in Undertale was always mostly aesthetic, but getting into the game was a terrible idea for me because I'm one of the worst rage-quitters you'll ever meet, and not being able to run away like in Pokemon only frustrates me.



I agree, what's the point of a story when the mechanics don't work? That's pretty much how I feel about Undertale in a nutshell. And even so, I thought Toriel was annoying, Flowie the most predictable and boring hostile ever, and every single enemy the worst thing I've ever read. The mechanics were never outright explained, and they don't work in my opinion, they only serve to frustrate. Another 6 months in production and Toby Fox could have made a better game if it had a RUN mechanic that made the story call you a coward, because by s**t everyone's talking about the story, and I don't want to have to choose between Markiplier breaking immersion every two seconds and the game breaking its own immersion by having klunky battle mechanics. Nobody likes being in a Zubat cave for hours on end, why do people give Undertale a pass?

My favorite video games stories are both Portals, Overwatch, and Katawa Shoujo. Why? In Portal, the story is secondary; the primary objective is solving puzzles with portals. The story is being passed along as people play, and doesn't distract from the gameplay. Instead, you have GLaDOS narrating you with snark and trying to kill you, or regretting everything and trying to help you as a potato. Your story has to EARN being silly, something Undertale never achieved for me. Overwatch's story isn't shoved in my face, and thus, I was able to interest myself by reading up on it while waiting for my friends to pass me the controller. Katawa Shoujo is all story, which is nice, because it's a visual novel. It's supposed to sell you on this world where there's a school for physically disabled children to be able to live their lives. It does this through visuals, but also hours of some of the best written dialogue I've ever seen, and illustrations that look like a believable japanese high school, even though most of the production was by genre-savvy westerners.

The only J-RPG I was able to get into was Bravely Default, mostly because I could set the level for grinding so low that I could easily just make myself power, and the mechanics activated the same strategist in me that was able to overcome various foes in Civilization V and Pokemon. I'd personally prefer if a game was just hard enough to not aggravate me. And that's why I can't finish Braid, but why, after several sessions, I was able to beat Bastion.

I'd heed your advice if it weren't for the fact that I have to deal with Undertale fans DAILY. My boss at work is a huge Undertale fan, and so are most of my friends. My only friend who I know is NOT into Undertale is currently living in Florida and living her own life, so if there's any reason why I sound like I'm coming off so strong, it's because I haven't been able to get any of these emotions out since last year, when Undertale started popping up EVERYWHERE.

I've had to deal with the fighting game fanbase. I'm sorry if you're a big fighting game fan, but you really need to loosen up and allow the noobies some victories and tips, because I tried playing Skullgirls and after meeting a couple people who told me to "git gud", just completely dropped it out of sight.

This is something I've always wondered. What really gets me is that so many games get away with being generally shoddy or shallow in terms of gameplay if they have a good story. Like with some JRPGs in particular; I'll hear them described as "The best game ever made! A true masterpiece!". Usually something from Square-Enix. But if I look a little further into the game in question, what is revealed is almost always the same: That the actual GAMEPLAY... as in the battle system, and exploration and stuff.... is often very mediocre at best. But OMG STORY AND CUTSCENES, so it's a "masterpiece". Ugh. I mean, I can understand a LITTLE bit of it to an extent. If a game has really likable characters for instance, I might latch onto one of them. Alot of people do that, and I can understand that one. But even then, I'm only going to do that if the game isnt shoving it's story up my nose every 2 seconds. For the most part though, the gameplay outdoes everything. It's why I wont play JRPGs... but I *will* play Pokemon. Pokemon does have a story, and it's decent I suppose, but it's the collecting and battling that makes it what it is, and the developers of that series did a fantastic job of making those battles both fun and deep. Particularly if you're playing against other players, then the game's depth REALLY shows itself. Most RPGs, though, are about as deep as a sheet of damp paper, when it comes to combat and related things.

And... yeah. When something is like that, I seriously just cannot see the appeal. I just cant.




Undertale... hmmm.... it's one of those games where you either really get into it, or just cant stand it, it seems. I'm familiar enough with it (one of those games where I did in fact latch onto a specific character, which is Chara in this case) and it's one of those games where you have to go far enough into it to really "get it". Even something like Flowey for instance: He seems like a very simple character at first, and you dont REALLY learn about him until.... you've reached the end of the game for a SECOND time. Before that, next to nothing about him is actually explained or even shown. The game seems to like to do that sort of thing: Stuff seems simple until looked into/at hard enough. Which is a type of storytelling that absolutely doesnt agree with everyone. The battle system though... I suspect there's no "run" command for two very specific reasons. 1, it doesnt fit with the core idea of the game (fight VS mercy, just running away is an odd third option), but also 2, the game actually has alot of focus on that combat system, which is inspired by bullet-hell games. And I can say from so very, very much experience: Nobody runs from anything in a bullet-hell game. There's too many bullets to do that. Those games fling horrible doom at you, and you're expected to dodge or die, simple as that. Undertale isnt even remotely close to being as hard as any of those, but that might be part of why it is missing that function. It's also a bit similar in alot of ways to older JRPGs, where you COULD run from battles... but you really, really didnt want to, because you needed all the EXP you could get due to how hard they were. While Undertale isnt difficult, that aspect may have been inspired by that sort of idea.



Ah, yeah, I can understand something like Overwatch's story. Usually if I AM going to know that part of a game, it's because it's enticed me to go and read up on it after the fact, as opposed to driving me crazy with it during gameplay. To me it's just such a better alternative to endless stupid cutscenes.



Ugh, sounds like some friends of mine. They arent into Undertale, but when they DO get into any particular game, they NEVER SHUT UP ABOUT IT. Recently it was Dark Souls 3. I responded to this by completely avoiding them for like a month and a half. It really was the only way. I know them well enough, they'd have spent silly amounts of time trying to get me interested in it for some baffling reason, and I already know that game wouldnt agree with me (whole series, the clunky controls drive me crazy). But they'd try it anyway, and never shut up, so... I said "screw that" and kept to myself for quite awhile.



Omigod I freaking HATE when people do that. I've been playing fighting games for a long time now. I've ran into so many different opponents and seen so many different people. ....and 95% of them are jerks. It's not that I get insulted or anything... I'm very, very good at fighting games, and am usually the one doing the winning. What gets me is watching them be so nasty to others, usually newer players. It gets me more than a bit angry. I mean, what the hell are they thinking? New players learning the game in question adds to the community... if you're always shoving them away by being jerks, how is the community supposed to grow? And why insult the skill of someone that's just starting out? I always want to yell at them, the ones that act like bullies, and say "Dont you remember when YOU just started out? Were you some sort of master from day one? Yeah, I dont freaking think so!" but I usually just settle for challenging them to a match myself and stomping them into the ground (I cant even tell you how satisfying it is to do that). They tend to react badly if they get their heads handed to them mere moments after spending a pile of time insulting new players.

Just... ugh. I dont understand why they act like that. The way I see it, even competitive games should be fun for everyone, right? It's not an excuse to act like a bully, but that's what that group often uses it for.

My favorite games are the ones that can tell me good stories. I'm a huge fan of JRPGs because of this. Final Fantasy, Tales of, and Nier are some of my favorites. If the game doesn't have a good, compelling story, I find that I often lack the motivation to keep going. For me, having good gameplay alone makes a game something like Pacman-- fun, but without some sort of narrative to drive you forward, you may as well be playing the same level over and over again. That doesn't excuse it being a poorly made game, but I've found that I enjoy games with mediocre gameplay and excellent story (like Nier) more than I do games with amazing gameplay and very little/no story.

As for the topic... I've always thought The Sims was overrated. I mean, you make a little digitial guy and pretend to be a normal person doing normal things? Where is the entertainment in that?

Also, Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Fun game and I can see how it would have blown minds back when it first came out, but when you compare it to any of the Zelda games from Gamecube forward, it doesn't hold up. The controls are clunky as hell (I nearly threw my TV out the window during that narrow, winding, INVISIBLE bridge in Ganondorf's castle). It's the video game world's Citizen Kane: amazing when it came out, not so much anymore, and yet people will still say it's the best ever made.

Pokemon GO

Sonic is cancer.

Kill it with fire.