Superpolished formulaic AAA vs flawed but interesting A-AA?

Which one would you rather have?

I'd get the latter almost every single time, unless its flaws really overwhelm the positive sides, however, I'm always willing to experiment and give a try at least as long as the game really tries hard to break some new ground.

Of course I'm not talking about extreme cases, but games that usually range in Metacritic scores between 6 and 10.

I'm fed up with sound, superpolished, setpieces-oriented copy-paste design that transplants the "best practice" in the industry. I'd rather give a chance to an underpolished ambitious game instead. For me it's better to play a somewhat failed, but ambitious experiment with lots of potential than something that never really tries to be anything, and only looks good or is just simply an uber-polished rehash of recycled ideas.

I agree with you. I rather have a unique albeit flawed experience than a well polished but generic one.

Not to say I don't enjoy AAA titles from time to time, but my most memorable gaming experiences seem to mostly come from lesser known studios.

Well if you look by my favorite games of all time (and what I've been posting on the forums over the years).

You will find that I overwhelmingly prefer A-AA games to AAA games.

Part of it is that AAA games have to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, and Thus have to be so Vanilla and PG that it is almost unberable. You will rarely if ever find good stories in AAA games, since as soon as you focus on a specific genre, setting and subject matter, then the ratings will fall, atleast if you go at it as the subject matter deserves, all because you appeal to a more limited audience, and reviewers might or might not be part of that audience.

I like odd Ideas, I like settings with stories that has something to say instead of almost cookie cutter good vs. evil stories that are so obnoxious in the way they avoid all deeper looks into the subject matter tehy want to portray.

I've always laughed at the supposed racism in DA:O for example, it was handled with such care that it almost did not exist. It is rare AAA games even try to touch on interresting of complicated subjectmatter, gameplay mechanics, or Worlds.

So AA games here *raises hand* although I alway welcome the AAA games that tryies to do the same :)

Don't care much as long as the game is A) fun and B) good.

Indie, AAA, A-AA, whatever. In the long run those are just terms we use to determine the level of investment (usually financial) made into the project which do not determine how much fun we can have with them nor how good it actually is. Destiny is an AAA project, many find it a bad game (and others find it great); Minecraft started as a very indie project and is loved by many (and surely also hate by others).

AA all the way. That's what the industry has been been lacking big time. Something to fill the middle ground between the 100 million dollar AAA stuff and the indies made on shoestring budgets.

You don't have the 'too many chefs' problem, and you can actually target your game more for specific groups of players, instead of trying to make 'something for everybody', because you have to recoup all that $$$.

Mid size teams is where it's at.

It depends, but i mostly agree with you.

Mass Effect 1 is my favourite in the series, yet it's the most unpolished of the 3. I also favour unique indies over yearly AAA sequels (Assassins Creed, CoD, etc) any day.

Both have their own pros and cons but I mostly prefer something new. I don't care about review scores. If it gets AA, then it is good in my books. Hell there are some games that got A here on gamespot but ended up being my GOTY for a long time because either those games brought back old school features and executed them in a new way or took some bold steps and introduced something new instead of playing safe.

i play all games and even though I appreciate the budget of AAA budget games, I still play indie games. I will admit the big production games like Uncharted, Tomb Raider and AC appeal to me more, because they push the technical aspect of the hobby.

Not all AAA games are formulaic, the same way not all A-AA games are diamonds in the rough. Best to keep things relatively simple: find a game that interests you and play it. Works for me.

Really, these days AAA games are not even polished, the gameplay not even good. As a matter of fact lesser budget games seens to be coming with much tighter controls and gameplay (and at a greater pace).

See for example DA:I and the new Divinity. The former is a mess, the other is absolutely tight.

another disguised alien isolation thread lmao just let it go, the game flopped

Consoles no longer have interesting games. They are Micheal Bay games with as much microtransactions and DLC as they can shove in the box.

I feel sorry for them. PC and Nintendo are clearly the only heartbeats still pumping.

Could you describe what you mean by AAA? You mean rated AAA? Because the only one that happened this year that was really formulaic was DA. If you mean the play it safe AAA game model that Activision, Ubisoft, and EA do... then I agree. The last one I bought was last years CoD.

By AAA/AA/A I meant both the budget and the degree of polish.

What Heil said.

A fundamentally "flawed" game shouldn't be scoring any sort of A.

But you know that this wasn't what I had in mind, and even AAA or AAAA games are still bound to be flawed in some way. It is only your personal bias / leniency that serves as a differentiating factor whether you're willing to overlook those flaws and give it a 9 or 10.

A flaw and a niggling issue are not synonymous. A flaw, to me, indicates a serious issue that is cause for concern. Something inconsequential is not. There is a difference, and that is the difference between a 6/10 game and a 9/10 game.

Aha, it's semantics then. Sometimes flaws can manifest them over time, especially in sports games when it takes you longer time to process everything and initially your feelings are overwhelmingly good. Can happen to any other game too, though.

I'm not sure why people just write an argument off "oh semantics, lol". There is a reason why semantics exist, so we can communicate equally with each other on common grounds of understanding.