Name a series you love or think is fine; yet, general consensus or everyone else seems to have grown to hate

After watching a few streams, I noticed tons of games I figured were fine and had good reviews in the past, now have big groups of people dissecting them as always being bad. Mass effect after andromeda, crash bandicoot after crash 4, MGS after Death stranding, etc.

What games do you think are cool to great. Fine to beloved. Games you just can't wrap your head around others hating so much. I'd include games you think are fine but have vitriol online that the game is poorly designed and just bad.

If you cant think of a game, I'd include other media. I thought ready player one was fine but later learned it's harshly criticized for being badly written. I thought harry potter was cool, but later realized a large majority of people who think it's bottom of the barrel poor writing, and so on.

For shows, I had no idea so many people thought GOT was bad till the final season. I never understood why it would ever get more than passing it's fine, since all the descriptions seem far from mainstream, with all the narrative deconstruction. (never watched it but saw several story summaries and other data.) Then I heard the hate grow after the finale which I assumed would be how viewers always saw the show due to it never really catering to the heroic fantasy were use to in mainstream mass appealing fantasy. Eh, I still think it's cool as well but I'm an easy please. XD.

I kind of think a lot of the hate for Kingdom Hearts comes from people hearing about the worst of it and just latching on to that. I'm certainly not gonna defending the story telling(and the annoying amount of importance to the story put on none numbered side games) but I still think there is a lot to like about those games. The combat in 1 is a little to simple for it's own good these days, but 2 really nails it(I think it actually compares to the jump from Arkham Asylum to Arkham City, if you try and go backwards the first game seems a lot more rough in comparison) and even if your not a big Disney fan it's hard not to appreciate the variety of worlds you get to visit.

Oh and not franchise specifically but Batman: Arkham Origins and Bioshock 2 often get singled out to much for being made by different teams than the rest of their respective series, but I think they are both still pretty dang good games(in fact I'd even go as far to say as Bioshock 2 has better combat than both 1 and Infinite).

I could list a bunch, but right now...off the top of my head...

I thought GoT was fine up until the second to last ep where you-know-who did you-know-what. That turn wasn't as well laid out as it could've been. That and I was a little disappointed how they wrapped up Little Finger and Varys. It seemed B&W were too concerned with Star Wars when they should've been trying to stick the landing, and now in retrospect with them abandoning that project (or being forced out) it was all for nothing.

I thought TLJ was fine outside small issues here and there and was disappointed Abrams...or Abrams via studio demands didn't build upon certain aspects Rian Johnson laid out with the hints that Rey might be a clone, or bringing Lando into the Canto Bight subplot using the weapons dealers as a way to rebuild the Resistance, or heck...broom kid.

Despite acknowledging they're horrible overall packages compared to the old Smackdown vs. Raw games, I really dug the simulation focused in-ring gameplay of the WWE2K series, at least 2K16-19, and with the proper setting and difficulty ramped up you can pull off some awesome reversal heavy matchups that really do a good job of capturing what you see on television. It's about how good of a match you can pull of, not about winning. Actually, I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to wrestling games as even the worst bring some cool elements to the table.

I thought Days Gone was much better than the critics gave credit to despite some really awful framerate issues on release. It's like certain folks within the games media had it out for that one for some reason long before it came out and afterwards kept with the narrative it was dogshit. The reactions the guys on the Bombcast would give Vinny when he said he was digging it was pretty annoying. The setting was great, the bike/gas mechanic was a unique and enjoyable element to open world gameplay, and taking on freaker hordes was incredibly fun requiring some strategic planning. It's a shame Sony shot down plans for a sequel. It deserved one. I'd much rather have that than another remaster of The Last of Us.

For me one of the most obvious examples is Last of Us 2. To me the game is better than the original in every way. But many people hated it because Joel dies, Ellie becomes a cold blooded killer, completely forgetting the people she killed as a girl, meaning she was already used to it. And of course the LGBTQ elements in the game that put a lot of people off and try to hide it by using every little petty excuse to bash the game. People especially hated Abby, because she wasn't the typical bombshell sexpot female character, but a buffed, Amazonian bruiser. However, her story started to mimic Joel's in a lot of way which was the nice irony of her hatred for him.

Another example for me is Final Fantasy X-2. People completely misjudged that game because of the Charlies Angels theme of it, and while there is some of that, the story is a lot deeper, especially if you don't follow the given path and discover all the plot threads which will take you well into 100 hours of gameplay instead of the 25 hours of rushing through the main missions and getting a generic ending. In a lot of ways, the game's story is better than Final Fantasy X's and I enjoyed every bit of those 100 plus hours.

And yes, Arkham Origins is another good example. I personally think its the second best Arkham game in the series, and I think City was actually the worst.

@panfoot: Arkham Origins got too much hate, yeah it was a bit too much like Arkham City, but those boss fights are some of the series' best.

Little Big Planet. I feel like I only ever hear people (including the cast) criticize the poor platforming and controls, but I really think it was a bellweather for bringing creator tools to a larger audience. If it wasn't for LBG, I don't think we would ever have gotten stuff like Mario Maker. Some of the player created levels from 2 onwards are incredible. Not just impressive from a technical and design perspective, but also genuinely fun to play. One especially memorable custom LBP 2 level was an RPG where you switched from the overworld to an arena on contact with an enemy, and entered real-time combat where you cast spells by drawing different symbols with the right stick. The general design aesthetic is also pretty fun, albeit not as impressive as more literally handcrafted games like the Swapper and Yoshi's Wooly World. The soundtrack of at least the first 2 games is also surprisingly good.

@panfoot: I agree. Batman origins was reviewed decently at the time 8/10 or 7/10 and now has this overall tone that it was bad. So bad that it's not included in tons of releases that package the game together. It had fantastic combat, the story was easier to wrap your head around, and more. It felt like a really good expansion pack that utilized all the assets and things before it. That doesn't make it a bad game just not as impressive so I understand, still, though all the batman games were good besides the most recent due to the pacing (batmobile, constantly stopping you from the fun parts, etc.) Bioshock 2 I played right after 1 on the same day due to playing infinite first. Bioshock 2 had great gameplay, I agree, plus the story had the same twist and turns within a shorter time period. I'm guessing it's another situation of not having the main team, so the souls' missing for people, like an imitation that's just as good if not better, but your brain doesn't care cause it's not the original.

I thought Days Gone was one of the best games of this generation, granted I played the game the year after it released and was fully patched. The story was really emotional, touching, exciting and funny at times. Telling the tale of a man slowly realizing how his self-destructive grief is harming the last few people he cares about. Its well paced with multiple exciting arcs and a satisfying conclusion.

I found the added tension and scarcity of zombies and post apocalypse really elevated the open world and I 100% completed that game which is something I've never done before.

@shiftygism: Cool, Days Gone is free on PSPlus so I've been wanting to give it a fair shake but never saw a good review of it by known critics in the industry. By reviews, I'm including impressions. I'm betting some of those impressions could be hearsay, cause I constantly hear that the bike is awful, and the story sucks, and it's a slog, yet the fanbase was created and grew, so I'm not sure. I'm giving it time so I go into it less biased. I think ill go in thinking it's gonna be super bad and play into my self-fulfilling prophecy or play it with all the critics in mind and get pleasantly surprised that these issues aren't as bad as I expected. Like dark souls consistently spelled out as so hard, causing me to play it differently than if I blindly played a game where I kept dying in the first level and would quit. @shiftygism yeah I enjoyed the gameplay in last of us 2 way more than 1, so it's shocking that people say 1's gameplay was better. something about even slashing with more nuance to animation makes gameplay feel better and last of us 2 uses more frames, details, and even the settings are incredible. The story bleeding into people's opinions is hard to say since anyone can successfully deny it or just have an opinion about the subject matter not being their thing. Given how last of us 2 is blunter in touchy scenes in addition to realism, it reminds me of how mortal kombat 1 vs 10 gets different responses with the same gory scenes cause the more serious or realistic look of things. Not sure if the other stuff affected people cause they usually deny that it did but who knows. @nuttism Little big planet is great for level designing. It reminds me of the fun I had using RPG maker on ps1. Something about finding clever ways to use limitations is fun. Turning a 2d game into a 3d one by tricks and perspective etc. Mario maker is good it's just super restrictive (for good reason) and gets lots of love cause of nostalgia and the coolness of finally designing an approved Mario level. Plus controls aren't floaty. XD.

@topcyclist: Days Gone is one of those games that's just Totally Fine. It's worse than but still in the same category as something like Ghost of Tsushima. Critics hit those games and bounce extremely off because they see another samey open world game and players end up flocking to it because it's a pretty solid open world game and they probably don't have a job that requires them them play a half dozen of those a year.

I love Lost and I enjoyed how it ended, I think I might be the only one but I stand by it.

The Internet (and by that I mostly mean reddit) has a habit of nitpicking things they don't like to death. Take the midichloridians in Episode 1, Luke's decision in Episode 8, the fake baby from American Sniper, the ending of GoT like you mentioned. They make it sound like the product is the worst thing ever made because the producers made one mistake that most regular people didn't even notice. Then again, if it's a series that they do like, like Marvel movies, they'll handwave the biggest plot holes like it's nothing.

One game example I can think of is Ashley from Resident Evil 4. It's an escort mission that was fine then and is fine now. But you can't have a conversation about that game without someone complaining about Ashley. I have actually seen several streamers play it for the first time and remark that they were really worried about the Ashley sections of the game due to all the talk about it, and then say that it wasn't as bad as they thought it would be.

As someone mentioned earlier in this thread about Bioshock 2, some people also seem to have an obsession to certain developers and movie directors, when they say "this sequel wasn't made by X, that means it can't be good". I absolutely believe that you can make a Bioshock game without Ken Levine, and seeing the shitshow that was Infinite it may even be good for the franchise.

Dynasty Warriors, but i'm not about to tell you about each entry's innovations because for the most part it's the same game over and over, but with a bit more polish and content, the most innovation came with 9 but it didn't go so well, up to that point i really just enjoyed smashing up armies of dudes and the silly voice acting. General consensus hasn't really changed towards the series, but i am bit saddened by the people who write it off so quickly.

Here's possibly a weird one, Limp Bizkit?
Very popular, then as rap/rock started to fade so did opinions, but it feels like there's a ground swell of appreciation going on at the moment, i never stopped loving them and i hope more people go back and check out what they missed.

I generally have a soft spot for games in the work simulation genre, some of those get really drubbed in reviews, especially yearly sequels, and I'll happily plug away at them in their 7th iterative version. I also played way more of Borderlands 2 which was generally reviewed as worse by the sites I check reviews on.

@stantongrouse: Yeah, I tend to see games that are slower paced, stealth, work simulators, walking simulators for lack of a better word, get labeled as negatives when their doing the thing their good at and labeled great when they take on other genera's action-oriented parts, thus losing what makes them special. People tend to want things to go the way they usually like instead of respecting that the dish (game) isn't to their taste but it's still good in its own right. It seems like a fair assessment for genres that are very niche is to make someone up on the subject review it, much like GB tries to do. The reviews that come off hating all the things that make a certain game genre or come off like their hand waving everything cause they think the genre is always bad anyway, come off bad.

For some reason, sports games always get a specific reviewer who's used to reviewing them. I rarely hear complaints from sports fans about reviews. That could be because they by every entry regardless of quality to keep up the roster but I only hear complaints from non-fans saying the games are the same every year. Similar to Call of duty, you'd think the company never works if you listened to dissenters. I can't imagine how hard it is to get a work simulator or any simulator review that caters to how the game really is since so many hate them or think everything in any entry is fine cause that's what fans want I guess. Naw, fans don't just eat slock and call it a day critic...try again.

@cikame: Dynasty warriors is cool, I think that the Zelda one and the fans gravitating towards it, showcase just how much people would like those games more if they gave them a chance and didn't label them repetitive in 40 minutes of play and move on. They definitely have a negative take by consensus with most saying Zelda is the only good one. Kinda sad. Blew my mind seeing it as a kid cause I knew how hard it was to have so many characters on screen. I'm guessing the layman doesn't know that doing such a thing is an achievement even if the ai isn't dark souls bosses dodging and countering. Reminds me of when my friends say Spiderman into the spider verse is cheap easy animation that took a few months at most and Pixar movies are much better cause they are realistic. Sometimes the consensus is not informed and takes what information they can gather. And the information out there is that Dynasty Warriors is just repetitive press one button to win games, even though even that can be relaxing fun. @apewins I can see how nitpicks turn into solid agreed-upon plot holes then negatives, leading to a movie being labeled bad. I read tons of forums on Reddit that label things they didn't like, especially characters not doing the exact right thing they would, as failures even if the character as stated would be out of character if they did whatever Reddit labels as right.

Halo. Yeah, the campaign for 5 wasn’t great, but multiplayer was sublime and I put it behind Titanfall and Doom as one of the best feeling shooters of the last gen. I feel like the discourse was overly dominated by campaign-only folks. Which, hey that’s fair they were disappointed, but Halo has always been more than just an 8-10 hour campaign. Really excited for what they do next with Infinite.

@apewins: Like Bioshock 2, Dragon Ball GT is a good example of this. The main reason people hate it is because it wasn't done by the creator Akira Toriyama and people used all kinds of unfounded excuses to dismiss everything about it. Nevermind that the story was actually a fun mix of original DB and DBZ. Nevermind that some of the best Sayian designs came from that series, and one of the best villains also came from that series. It wouldn't be until Dragon Ball Super, the latest "canon" series which didn't live up to the hype and arguably had a worse overall story than GT that many people realized how unreasonably harsh they were. Yet, still some hate it and refuse to relent on it.

The Fabula Nova Crystallis only has one truly bad game and the test are either interesting experiments or objectively good games.

If the whole Final Fantasy XIII sub-series started with Final Fantasy XIII-2, I am 100% confident people's opinion of it would be more positive by an order of magnitude.

I thought most of Telltale's adventure games were better than most people seem to think. There were a few games in there I didn't really like - Jurassic Park, Guardians of the Galaxy, and GoT - but by and large I wasn't really sick of their particular formula and could have happily kept playing that style of narrative driven game. Similarly, mechanically I like Far Cry more and more every game even when people seem to bounce off them harder.

Oh, and Saint's Row. Gat Out of Hell and Agents of Mayhem might not have been barn burners, but I thought they were fine, especially on a steep discount.

oh apparently MGS is bad now because a different game was made? That kind of reminds me of the backlash against Arcade Fire after they released the album Everything Now and people started looking back at their catalogue thinking... 'Was this ever good?' For what it's worth, i still think MGS is one of the most enjoyable gaming series out there.

Dota also gets a lot of hate for the toxicity of online players & the moneyhooks in the game, but the gameplay is extremely enjoyable and has lasted for decades for a reason. It is very annoying that it's such a hard thing to get into to see the beauty because i genuinely do think it's a top 3 best multiplayer games ever created.

@topcyclist

Reminds me of Football Manager, which is a yearly release. Often i look at the features they release for the new game and it's all extremely iterative work being done on the game; Here's a new information panel, here's a slight adjustment to how you get to train your players, here are a few new ways to interact with the media. If you're not dedicated to that game for a few years already, you probably wouldn't even be able to spot certain new features. So you want to hear about this game from someone that's already deep into the game. But the target audience will not be seeking out 'reviewers' to do that work. They already have all these community figures to seek out that play the game daily and know exactly how the game has evolved over the years and what the new features add and take away from how it used to be played.

I had kind of the opposite happen to me. I actually didn’t mind No Man’s Sky at launch, to me a game that takes big risks and fails is better than one that doesn’t and receives universal praise. I saw it as a cult hit with a very controversial spokesperson, and someone who pushed the envelope of the triple-A scene. It was also subversive, forced the player to travel 10 planets before discovering a lush planet with creatures. More often than not, started the player on a toxic planet that killed you in 10 minutes, making it difficult to begin, but highly rewarding when you finally left your starting planet’s atmosphere for the first time.

There’s no doubt NMS was underdeveloped and overhyped, but it scratched an itch for me that no other game has done. I‘d never played Elite Dangerous or any other space sim, really, so maybe that’s part of it. But I wanted to feel alone in a universe, and NMS provided that at the time. The creature AI was awful, many of the planets were vomit-green, toxic and empty, but when you found a really lush planet with a habitable atmosphere and weird bouncy fauna, then it was a unique and exciting experience.

Today, you’d think it was the best game ever. The devs finally delivered on broken promises. Base building, online play, Nexus missions, a storyline, tutorials to show you how to play, lush planets in nearly every system, etc. But part of me really likes the ”old” NMS that sparked controversy, made you feel alone in the universe, had mushy brown planets most of the time, etc. It was so bad it was good, but now it kind of reminds me of another generic survival sim clone. There’s nothing really all that subversive or unique about imho.

Tl;dr: others grew to love No Man’s Sky, I grew bored of it.

Yeah, whilst I don't love it, I'll happily play it again. And, to be honest, the Joker/Batman dynamic was better in Origins.

@prolurker: Funny you mentioned your take on why you enjoy the "flawed" version of no man's sky vs the smoothed-out version for what was supposed to be released (updated)... Luckily CDs still exist of the old version and you could play that offline. I was pondering how media is moving to a more catered experience given so much volume of info on what people like and dislike, hence tons of backlash on movies endings or tv shows endings are being reshot and inserting all the fan ideas.

Anyway, I do see how appealing to what the people want, which is usually fun now, no waiting, can backfire as there is no build-up and people move on. People sometimes forget how satisfying working to a goal is when you finally achieve the goal when it's hard vs just getting it. Lush plants everywhere aren't as interesting (from your explanation) as finally finding one lush planet in your large-scale search. Obviously, it sells best when every streamer gets what they want immediately, with tons of weapons, missions, gear, and so on. I guess it's about finding the balance, yet it's all too easy to just crank the button on giving everyone more of everything to appease appetites. It may be training people to expect constant strong stimuli to get enjoyment. But who knows.

Personally, for example of my own brain being trained through catering to my watching habits, I noticed I got used to clicking skip ad in a youtube video after 5 seconds. When that button's not there, and the video is just 5 seconds given advertisers know people skip anything longer, it feels long, even if it's the same wait and the ad is literally trying to present their case in the shortest time they can. I don't really watch tv normally so the ad thing hasn't been a thing for me, but it has me wondering how short my attention drove down since I used to watch 7 minutes of ads for a 30-minute tv show and be fine. :P

Side note for fun I like to think, trailer teasers before trailers are 5 seconds cause people aren't expected to pay attention and watch 2 minutes of info on a movie without switching it off. :(

Resident Evil 5 is one of those games that a lot of people disliked. For me it's the one game in the series that I played through several times. I enjoyed looking for collectables, replaying missions to grind upgrade points, unlocking and upgrading ridiculously overpowered weapons. Yes, I really enjoyed making the numbers.go.up!

Ok...I have a confession to make...I very much enjoy playing “Marvel’s Avengers” for a few hours every week...I don’t think it’s nearly as bad the internet makes it out to be.

*Hides behind the couch cowering in fear of possible retaliation*

@thej6m: I'm actually discovering this myself about Marvel's Avengers. The complaints about the end-game content being lackluster compared to other live service games is very true, but the core gameplay is actually fun if focusing on a character and fully maxing out their abilities.

I have no problem with the ME 3 ending. Sure, it could have been better (like everything can be improved), but it was pretty decent ending. The game's story has some issues, but they happened way earlier than those last few minutes and thus the original ending was probably the best they could do to wrap it up at that point.

On that note, I didn't like the expanded ending nearly as much. I think they wasted time addressing issues that weren't really issues, or retconning things that didn't need changes.

I dismissed that game completely since it just seemed like a mix of the Walking Dead and Son's of Anarchy, and the videos they showed made it seem like every single character was unlikable and worst of all uninteresting. I got it from ps plus but can't really bring myself to start it atm. Just to be fair, I disliked 98% of all dialogue in GTAV and couldn't get into RDR2 either.

I replay KH1 and 2 as well as BBS every other year or so. I don't skip the cutscenes.

@topcyclist: I actually did revert to the CD version, but it's so buggy (and technically is the 1.0 version before the day-1 patch), so it wasn't much fun. But on PC you can download old steam versions of games, which is what I ended up doing once I got a decent PC to run it.

I agree with your second paragraph, It does make me nostalgic for the late 90s/early 2000s era when games weren't as expensive to make, so game designers and writers could take bigger risks in order to recoup costs of production. Ha and yeah, I don't even see ads on youtube with adblock.

On the bright side, a few indie games do a really fantastic job of keeping the player waiting and extending gratification. A few titles like Hollow Knight, Limbo, Dear Esther, Stardew Valley, etc. come to mind. :)

Immortals Fenyx Rising seems to get a lot of unwarranted hate. Yes the writing isn't great, but I think it is super fun to play and I enjoyed doing the puzzles and the challenges. The game is $30 now and i highly recommend if you want to play an action open world game. I think the combat is decently fun as well. Its unfair also to compare this game to breath of the wild simply because you can climb on anything, but this game is not breath of the wild and they are two separate games. Thats like me saying that BOTW copies GTA because they are both open world.

I STILL stand by the original Mass Effect trilogy as a phenomenal space opera epic with a perfectly fine ending. Not a great ending, but a fine one. And the journey there is absolutely incredible.