Here are some hot takes, because I love venting by shitting on people's favorite games. I will also suggest superior alternatives.
GTA San Andreas
This game has aged like a smartphone. The camera sucks, the controls are mediocre at best, and the sound quality is inconsistent. Fights are based on finding a way to cheese them, and the lack of either a proper save system or proper checkpoints means so much replaying that, in an age where I have another hundred games that I want to play, it means I won't bother replaying this one. I used to like this game a lot when it came out, but nowadays? I only touch this again because there are no other good open world games on Switch. Superior alternative: Postal 2
Doom Eternal
Possibly the biggest disappointment in my life when it comes to gaming. I loved the Doom reboot. Loved it. With the exception of some of the optional challenges and the shitty boss fights (I dislike inorganic boss fights and bosses with phases as they feel cheap to me), Doom 2016 is one of the best games I've ever played. I pre-ordered Eternal, thinking I'd get more of the same. Instead, I got an annoying puzzle platformer shooter. Now, I wish I could find what else the designers of this game worked on so that I can avoid buying it. In fact, that's a good idea for a website that I'll consider making. Anyhow, the level design looked good to the eye but made zero sense: Two titans (who at that point you have no idea what they are) are frozen in place as one struck the other with a lance. You need to find a battery to plug into the lance so that it turns on and pierces the chest of the other titan so that you can slide through the wall and fall behind the titan in a place looking like Bowser's castle, with spinning flaming chains, and other silly distractions and traps. What the hell were they thinking when designing this level? They were simply trying to make it "look cool" with no consideration of whether it makes sense, if it is fun or even what game they are designing levels for. The graphics were great. The music was fine, though Mick did a much better job in Doom 2016 in my opinion. The gameplay was garbage, focusing on quantity over quality, with the challenge being mainly to figure out the correct sequence of enemies to kill and with what weapon and on what weak spot instead of just going with the flow like in 2016. You used to have a set of amazing tools to have fun with, now you have an array of puzzle pieces to be selected in the right order when they aren't cooling down or out of ammo. And, maybe worse of all, the story and the protagonist would only need to be slightly worse in order to reach the point where they are so bad that they become good again. Unfortunately, they didn't reach that point, so they are both left being just shit. The protagonist, who I refuse to call Doomguy or Doomslayer as he is clearly a different character, since he can't even punch as hard or move as fast as the 2016 Doomslayer or even the original Doomguy unless he has his abilities charged and not in a cooldown or whatever. So anyway, that new boy bent the knee to some king almost at the start of the game. Absolute Haram. Meanwhile, the Doomslayer in 2016 was smashing screens on the ground because he couldn't bother to listen to Hayden's attempts to provide exposition. This new boy is some Game-of-Thrones-nerd's wet dream and does not belong in a series like Doom. Superior alternative: Doom (2016)
Red Dead Redemption 2 Online
An empty, boring hub-world that you very slowly traverse, going from mini-game to mini-game, because that is all Rockstar knows how to do nowadays. Superior alternative: Any Civcraft-style Minecraft server.
GTA V Online
See Red Dead Redemption 2.
Skyrim
This is still one of the best games I've ever played, but Bethesda deserves a ton of shitting for still having game-breaking bugs even after re-releasing the game countless times and for not providing a save-fixing service for console players, not even as a paid service. My opinion about Skyrim is oscillating between 0/10 and 11/10 fast enough to be audible to humans. Superior alternative: Skyrim, when it works.
The Witcher 3
Also buggy, but also not as good as Skyrim. The Witcher 2 actually kept me playing a bit longer then 3 before I went back to Skyrim. I may finish this someday. It's just not high in my priorities based on what I saw after a few hours of playing. Superior alternative: Skyrim
Stardew Valley
I liked fishing in this game. And that was all I liked. Everything else I hated. Farming was tedious. I couldn't care less about the villagers. I constantly wanted to take my protagonist back to his previous career. Finally, I got extremely pissed during the egg hunt because it would not let me go fishing. Overall, it has this mildly puke-inducing Nintendo-goodie feeling that I cannot stand in games. Superior alternative: Rimworld in peaceful difficulty.
Undertale
Yeah, ha-ha, genuinely smart gimmicks all over the game but it was uninteresting and had boring gameplay, mediocre graphics, and an annoying cast of characters. Some amazing music though. Superior alternative: Browsing /b/ for 20 minutes and then going out with a real person.
Bloodborne
Other than the amazing graphic design and atmosphere, this was a disaster for me, one that I thankfully didn't pay for. Not only do I not like the idea of souls-like games in general, because I get precisely zero kicks out of overcoming tedious, hard, trial-and-error challenges, but Bloodborne also seemed unpolished to me. I didn't bother to go past the first two fights or so. Superior alternative: Diablo 2 or 3.
Monster Hunter Generations
Rainbow Six Siege
Pretty boring. I played it with friends too, so I had someone to talk to while I was down. Still, I got bored by how little action this game had. The action is good but so little as a ratio of time spent on the game! And I wasn't even half bad - I did fine after some rounds - but the only reason that I didn't uninstall it after a few round was that I had friends in my party. I played for a few days, then dropped it for something else. Superior alternative: TF2 or Overwatch.
BF2042
This is not really a hot take, as this is, after all, widely considered one of the worst Battlefield games. First of all, it does not feel like BF. Specialists? Really? Are they copying Rainbow Six? And the cringe every time they open their mouths is truly unbearable. At least EA reduced it a bit in the latest patches. I should have guessed the series would eventually become a cringe-fest from back when they started selling ridiculous atmosphere-destroying cosmetics in BF5. Superior alternative: BF2142
Baldur's Gate 1
I did not play this back in the day. I got this and BG2 after I liked (though not loved) playing BG3. I still have not tried BG2, but BG1 was unplayable for me. At this point you'd have to pay me quite a lot to play this. It is basically a save-load simulator: Tons of trial and error, and I mean tons. Easy to die. Needlessly complex mechanics. Random deaths galore. I played for some hours and got rid of it. I don't care how innovative this was when it came out, it is complete garbage by today's standards, and there are tons of other games from the same year that are still perfectly enjoyable even today. Maybe BG2 is better, but I doubt it, we'll see. Superior alternative: Divinity: Original Sin II
GTA Vice City
More punishing than San Andreas. Again, I don't care how innovative these games were. There is no enjoyment to be had by playing this today for the first time. If you are nostalgic about it, then fine. But there are tons of other games from the same era that are excellent even by today's standards. FFS, the way-older GTA 2 is much better and super fun to play, even today. Superior Alternative: GTA 2
Mario Odyssey
Nice controls and graphics but I couldn't find anything interesting in this game. It felt slow, unrewarding, and pointless. Superior Alternative: Super Mario Bros.
It Takes Two
Heavy Rain
Another World / Out Of This World
Dwarf Fortress
A shitty game with great ideas that served as the basis for so many great games. I would not recommend it to anyone, not even the new graphical version. I just cannot picture any person I know that would enjoy this. There is no sound, alerts don't interrupt by default the game even if they are important (have fun changing the default behavior by going through a list of hundreds of alerts choosing which ones you want to interrupt the game when you don't know what half of them even are until you lose a game for missing them), the game runs too quickly by default. All of these contribute to having no clue about what is going on around your fortress. Top that off with the slowest saves ever so that you cannot save-scum by saving every day and you are basically forced to eat shit whenever the game feels like it. It takes an inordinate amount of reading wikis and forums to find out how to do the most basic things. Nothing is intuitive. Nothing. Every single serious choice in the UI is made in the most awkward way. I really wanted to like this. It seems like there is a gem behind all the trash, but I don't have enough time to waste trying to find the gem only to be tricked by not knowing something and losing it again. Games take a long time to restart too, it's not like this piece of crap gives you a quick way to learn from your mistakes. I also strongly believe that the game will become even worse in the future as more features are added to it when what it needs is 1 metric ton of polishing and a major redesign of the interface, which becomes harder and harder as more bloat is added. Superior alternative: Rimworld
Do you disagree with me? Leave a comment and I guarantee that it will be ignored because you are objectively wrong.
