Are most mainstream games not very good? or we are all hipsters?

Hello friends,

I have been noticing something. either old games or new games. mainstream games are either really really suck, or not very good, or just not as good as non mainstream games.

some of examples are

• GTA
• Call of Duty
• Battlefield
• Gears of war
• Uncharted
• Last of us
• Tomb raider
• Resident evil (before 7)
• Halo (except 1 which was ok)
• Far Cry
• Assassins creed
• PUBG
• Fortnite
• Bioshock
• Machinegames Wolfenstein
• Mass Effect
• The Witcher
• etc

All these franchise has common that either they really suck, or they are not very good, or if they are good, they are nowhere near as good as thier non mainstream counter part.

now im not saying all mainstream games are bad. Half life is kinda mainstream and greatest franchise in history. so is Doom. although they are no whear near as mainstream as GTA and COD.

so my friends, why are most mainstream games so shallow? is it because more popular game is? bad it become?

lets discuss

All Resident Evils before 7 suck?

Um...

I wouldn't take it personally, it is a Ghost thread after all.

You're just you.

Weren't you into Cinderella? 😁

STFU I'm not your friend, stop talking about Doom for one fucking second or I swear my head is gonna explode.

The vast majority of mainstream games were never that good. What they were always good at was advertising and production values. The large majority of people tend to buy what they hear about the most.

A lot of my favorite games of all time often time go overlooked. There is a reason that when people make toplists you constantly see the same games. Sure, a few of them are legitimately great games (but the best is another question) but the problem is that those are some of the only games those people actually played. Sure lower budget games have a few more bugs, but if you keep playing and dig beneath that they often times offer a much deeper experience. It's easy to say a game sucks when you never played it and see others bashing it that never played it and it only scores between a 5-8 because the devs didn't have the money to advertise or pay off journalists and review sites/magazines.

I have a love/hate relationship with indies since a lot of them are overly pretentious artsy crap, but I REALLY miss AA games. They often time have the best gameplay but got buried in a sea of people crying "mediocrity" to push the idea of huge AAA games being "better."

Some are good, most suck. That's not a mainstream thing, that's just gaming as a whole. AAA, indie, and everything between, just how it breaks down. Can apply that to most entertainment really.

A lot of big mainstream titles have become increasingly shallow and derivative over the years, but that's to be expected. It's a huge industry now, the "core" gamer isn't really the target audience anymore. Which again, is how it goes with most forms of entertainment. They don't make summer blockbusters for film snobs.

Most of that list you posted doesn't appeal to me, but wouldn't call myself a gaming hipster. Still plenty of big name titles that are good shit.

Either way it's no biggie, this industry makes games for everyone. More games I want to play than I could ever get around to.

Well said,

Either old or new. Mainstream games has always been pretty bad. even earlier GTA3, vice city and san andreas were extremely shallow and dull games. many kids love them just to mess around and using some cheat codes but actual playing part is terrible.

Their is definitely a contrarianism where-by people try to project their tastes as "superior" to elevate themselves, typically against products that appeal mainstream using the product itself as a direct reflection of themselves and other people, where really, it has very little to do with the game quality itself.

Other cases are ideological. The great SJW threat where anything deemed progressive it automatically, by any means necessary, written off, regardless of the game quality itself.

We've obviously seen this recently with Last Of Us 2.

On the other hand you get the opposite spectrum of that, where-by far-left users become obsessed with it to the point it becomes the governing factor in games, extending to games media, which itself, in turn feeds a loop right back into the latter and vice versa.

-

A lot of disillusionment arises from gaming media. Aside from activism under the guise of journalism, their actual gaming abilities can verifiably be put into question. Along with them in no uncertain terms acting as a PR extension.

When games get high praise from these sources rather than accepting it as trust-worthy, flags are raised constantly.

This is exacerbated by your "Upper Echelon Gamers", "Dunkey", "Quartering" etc.. who in some cases, make a business from attacking them critically.

And again, in a constant loop, journalists themselves actively show disdain against these people as well as mobs of gamers.

Basically, rather than evaluating game on quality, it all gets fogged up by nonsense pilled on nonsense.

But to answer the question, I think their are plenty of great mainstream games. They tend to get hyperbole attached or written of with a fight or flight mentality.

I think it's great in this day and age something like Mount And Blade, which on paper should absolutely be niche, with practically no PR, made by two people, can blow up on word of mouth on PC to sell millions effectively cutting the gaming (PR) media out.

Reminds me of the of 80's computers where guys programmed their own games, before all the shit we have now.

I donno.

Mainstream games which often targets everyone to sell the most copies, and often don't excel at anything as a result, often wont please those who play lots of games and knows what they want from them.

Like Conan, most of the games on your list there don't interest me, but I play other mainstream games. But yeah. Most mainstream games suck indeed.

This. ^ You can't satisfy all the people all the time.

The more investment there is hanging on a game's exceeding prior sales, the less likely it is a studio's going to be willing (or allowed) to take risks or do its own thing, so we keep getting rehashes of lowest denominator, tried-and-tested formulas, which gets very boring for the player. Marketing budgets swell to compensate for the apathy, drowning out all the smaller titles which actually do deserve attention for trying something different and being, well... fun to play.

"Niche" has become a dirty word, when, in an ideal world, it's what all games/music/films would be.

I'm pretty open to most types of games. Playing GoT right now, the art direction and walking through ancient Japan is in it self an worthy experience.

As I get older I feel like I'm moving in the opposite direction from manifestations of outrage and cancel culture. I can be critical of something but I'll try to spend the same amount of energy looking for the positives too.

That list is all over the place... you could put pretty much anything that sold like 2 million+ on that list... like Doom.

Anyways most of the super duper successful stuff doesn't really tickle my fancy these days .

Gears 5 >>>>>>> you. :P

I'd argue ~80% of mainstream games are good. Atleast good enough for my taste.

Ghost should be banned from making threads.

and yes Ghost you are a Hipster just you though everybody else here is cool stop making threads.

I found a Cinderella game for you go play and get lost.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Cinderella-Activity-Fun-PC-CD-Rom-Video-Game-Windows-Computer-Disney-Kids-/133268074180

Instead of counter argument you my friend started personal attacks over and over again.

we all know you only like mainstream games.

I find most of the games on that list there to be very good games myself. 🤷‍♂️

The short answer is, yes we are all just hipsters.

Slightly longer answer. We are all core gamers who have played more stuff than the average person, and thus have a deeper unsertanding of how a games mechanics work. Move forward and shoot the things might be enough for most people, but we get bored by that having done it in so many other games. We appreciate a game with more movement options, better level design, challenging AI, and such.

And all of this is fine. Entertainment is subjective, and if Candy Crush floats your boat, by all means float that boat. I think the problem arises when we start thinking being good at videogames makes us better than everyone else, and we get angry at people for liking stuff we don't.

There is no conpiracy behind AssCreed and CoD reviewing well, those games are designed to appeal to a wide range of people. It's on us as gaming obsessed folks to learn to recognize when a reviewer or site just isn't into the same things we are, and find someone who is.

@ghosts4ever: We are not all anything Ghosts. You are a category all your own, brother. Cheers.

Produces great list of games (except fortnite and pubg)

None of those games are actually great. they are just popular.

@ghosts4ever: Opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one and most of them stink. Yours most of all.

@ghosts4ever: Its almost like you and all the newer alts just try to out stupid one another, congrats as you've just taken the lead.

In your world maybe but you have extremely limited taste and try to be a hipster, this is just your dogshit opinion. Stalker and original Deus Ex is the only non-mainstream game you like i'm afraid to tell you.

The more video games you play, the more specific your taste will be. For those who know what they like, those "mainstream" tags mean nothing.

Can you give me the opposing list to those games please?...

"nowhere near as good as thier non mainstream counter part"

Like....

• GTA
• Call of Duty
• Battlefield
• Gears of war
• Uncharted
• Last of us
• Tomb raider
• Resident evil (before 7)
• Halo (except 1 which was ok)
• Far Cry
• Assassins creed
• PUBG
• Fortnite
• Bioshock
• Machinegames Wolfenstein
• Mass Effect
• The Witcher

Seriously give me the list because I want to play those games.

What western RPG non mainstream open world RPG is better than Witcher 3?.... What GTA like non mainstream game is better than GTA5?... Please tell me, I need to play these AAAA games no one has heard off.

this is literally your worst post ever. but keep scraping, you'll bottom out eventually.

And your opinion is worthless, so there's that.

Don't know why all you people keep taking the bait. The obvious troll threads always get a bunch of replies within seconds. Says more about you than Ghosts, I think.

Only thing you're ever going to find in big budget games these days is something safe that is guaranteed to sell and make a profit, meaning formulaic, low-risk game design. Independent development is where you're going to find passion and creativity.

@me2002: LOL

I don't know. Maybe? It's very subjective.

Perhaps its a matter of getting jaded or burnt out and chronocentrism.

course they all suck what do you expect? the average joes a complete fucking idiot.

Really still no example of one game you listed with its "non-mainstream" counterpart?... I mean come on you guys attack mainstream games and say SO many games are better in the same genre, well god damn what games are you talking about?... Give me a link to these incredible games that are better than the Witcher 3 and GTA5?...

The problem is that the mainstream games are derivative because they sell better and receive better mainstream praise staying derivative.

TLOU2 is a great example of this. Naughty Dog could have played it safe and made another Joel/Ellie adventure with better gameplay and would have been hailed as geniuses by the mainstream. They tried to do something different and got panned for it by a lot of quarters. The criticism was as OTT as some of the praise for this game. Either way they tried to do something and it wasn't well received.

Square Enix has the same problem with the FF7 remake. They have been kind of warned not to change things to much. It has been mentioned that the whispers are a metaphor for the obsessive FF7 fans who want an exact remake of the original with no space for any creativity from the makers.

@Grey_Eyed_Elf said:

Really still no example of one game you listed with its "non-mainstream" counterpart?... I mean come on you guys attack mainstream games and say SO many games are better in the same genre, well god damn what games are you talking about?... Give me a link to these incredible games that are better than the Witcher 3 and GTA5?...

I can name many non mainstream games that are better than GTA5 and witcher 3. infact GTA5 is one of the worst game i have ever played. its so freaking casual devoided of any kind of challenge.

Entire Mafia series is better than GTA5 let alone original Mafia.

I love me some Witcher and Mass Effect. The new Tomb Raider games aren't bad either. I haven't liked a single GTA game since Vice City. Basically, it's all personal taste.