Neobr10

If you only want to find fault in what he's saying and don't want to listen to what he's actually saying then I have no hope of convincing you otherwise.

I did listen, i just dont have to agree with him. Am i forced to agree with that guy just because i read his article? In my opinion his anlysis is poor for all the reasons i mentioned back there.

I think for a few games you could actually make a "scientific baseline of overratedness". The better the average scoring on a game, the better it has to be in evaluable factors than its peers released concurrent and before.

Eg, by this "scientific" method Deus Ex wouldn't go by as overrated because it was ground-breaking and downright awesome when it came out. It certainly deserved the praise it got. And apart from some rabid fanboys I think the general agreement is that many games have taken up the premise of this game and improved on it.

While, on the other hand, Half Life 2 was greated with ludicrous scorings and praise on release which, considering what came before and concurrent, simply was unwarranted.

Now, this certainly isn't an exact science but it is a general rule of thumb that could be used as a guideline.

Well, you keep bringing up linearity when it isn't his target at all. And he isn't comparing Half-Life to Doom either. His reason for bringing up Doom was to show that linearity is not a bad thing as it serves a purpose there, not to say that Doom does linearity better than Half-Life.

His two main points were that Gordon is kind of a Mary Sue and that the game is a content muncher. Just imagine Bioshock doing the same thing.

He even sums it up in the article: "Half-Life is a collection of 10 different games each designed to be fun for the two hours they’re featured and to feed you setpieces and scripted sequences that add up to an unfinished story with a non-character MarySue for a protagonist and a vague alien threat as the villain."

Ugh, talking about underrated/overrated games...
All you do is bashing games many other people love, plz don't do that, this thread asks for flaming and arguments. Let's make this an "underrated" game thread, where you talk about games which fell under the radar for many people, amplifiy those positive emotions, not the negative ones.

Cheers

If you want to talk about underrated games, you can always make a new thread about it or find an existing thread. Hijacking this one just because you don't like it, on the other hand, is out of the question.

Nope. Breaking consensus is always interesting. It's good to have a place where to state how your opinion differ from the vast majority on a game, and what your reasons are. It's insteresting to see that people don't appreciate official classics. I adore Deus Ex, I think that game is pretty much flawless, so I found the anti-DX posts very interesting. As Hesusio said, underrated games are another subject for another thread. Actually, the whole "GoG suggestions" section is basically about that.


Also, yeah, I never got into Diablo. I understand it's considered as the best diablo-like ever, and it possibly is, but I also find diablo-likes repetitive and bland. And I don't like games that rely too much on metagaming.

The darkfall games. I found them tedious, cheap feel and dull.

Alright, didn't mean to disrupt you, my experience just showed me that these kind of threads easily break out in flame wars. To make up for it I'll think I'll jump on the train.
Shadow of the Colossus - played it only for about an hour and felt it was incredibly boring.(I'll try again though, getting the ICO SoC Collection in the next months)
Diablo - I thought it was okay but playing through them more then once never occurred to me, WAY too repetitive. Can't imagine someone putting hundreds of hours into it and playalikes are more of the same crap with more boring themes.
Gears of War - The games are OK but way overrated, their violence is the only driving factor and when you(I won't say grow up it's not entirely true) grow tired of them all that is left is a gray-brown mass of average third-person manshoot.
Call of Duty - Self explanatory.
hmm, there are actually a lot more, I seem to not be able to enjoy A LOT of the mainstream stuff, not trying to be a hipster but most games these days just don't do it for me anymore. Apart from graphics I think videogames took a step back. They are just too expensive to make, the next generation will probably be a disaster.

Bioshock was so completely underwhelming. That is definitely on overrated game. It was entertaining. I played it, I liked it (not enough to try the sequel). But my god the reviews made it sound like they had invented pizza or something. On the other hand I don't think I'll ever forget running away in the beginning of Half Life 2.

my list in no particular order:
Halo
FFVII
Bioshock
Portal
Super Mario Galaxy

edit:
Braid

and most indie titles that have any polish that reviewers tend to love a little too much

Agreed, but in my case, most of the disappointment came from having played the System Shocks. I actually went into it completely blind, but it kept me reminding that a lot of it had been done before and better. Still, it was fairly good at the beginning up until the big "Polito reveal". If it would've ended right there and if I didn't have a basis for comparison, I'd feel the praise was more deserved. Oh and if it would've cut the stupid Vita Chambers, the plumbing mini-game, the component gathering and the "big moral choice".

Oh.. if we're going underrated, then it's the Saboteur for sure. Love that game, that pretty much nobody played.

Sacrifice and Giants: Citizen Kabuto were not overrated games during their time, you silly man. As I recall, Giants only got a 79% on PC Gamer, and I don't think other critics were as generous Sacrifice, however, was one of the few games to earn a 90% or more on PC Gamer, and the rating was not given lightly. It fully deserved the high score, even if it didn't sell well, and you are accusing the most revolutionary Third Person RTS RPG "crap" on what basis? It was a damn right fun and original game, and it was way more advanced than most games during that time. As for the other game, Giants may have had its flaws, but it was certainly not overrated, and it was funny as hell and brilliant in a lot of levels. Their graphics were different, even if they were slightly similar. I think you're just calling them overrated, because of their newfound popularity at GOG, and you don't know how to play or enjoy any of those games. It's alright if you don't like playing them, just don't accuse them of being bad games just because you don't like it when other people like them.

You must have been slaughtered by Pyro and Charnel and Sacrifice to hate that game. You must have been torn apart frequently by the Sea Reapers without a save function to hate Giants as well.

As for Half-Life: graphics were just learning how to get better, so I've had enough of people complaining its graphics suck because they're polygonal. I DON'T CARE. It was 1998, 3D graphics were still polygonal, and Half-Life was a considerable improvement on polygonal engines during that time. Unreal was another exception, and that game was polygonal too (though smoother in some ways). So what if it was not as detailed in story or interface as System Shock? It still revolutionized the game experience by telling its intentionally limited story in a cinematic, no cutscenes, entirely interactive fashion! It improved upon Quake too, becuase even if they were the same engine, Quake didn't have stealth, scripted sequences, moving mouths, strategic A.I., or the level of acrobatics as Half-Life. You say it doesn't earn the right as a good game, but the truth is, without Half-Life, skeletal animation wouldn't have existed in later games. I think it complemented other games such as Thief and System Shock 2, despite the fact that it sadly overshadowed those games.

I don't think you did so well in this game either, and if you were bored with it, you probably were paying more attention to the shooting than towards its other qualities. I guess since you can't see the good qualities, I can't argue with you.

Call of Duty series, EA Sports games...those are the ones that immediately come to mind.

Pretty much every game that is regarded as a "classic". Torment, Fallout, Deus Ex, The Longest Journey, Baldur's Gate, and the list could go on. Being overrated, however, does not neccesarily mean that they are in any way "bad" games. I too enjoy some, if not all, of the "big" names of older gaming, but
[rant] I am just tired of 5 star pretentious reviews/discussions, often filled with pseudo-philosophycal garbage explaining why this and this game is the second coming of Jesus Christ and everyone who is incapable of enjoying some of them must be lower life-forms than the enlightened few who can see their true revolutionary and philospihycal worth. It's as if people were unable to think for themselves, and find it easier to just jump on the bandwagon of blind praise - hipster gamers who missed out on the games when they came out - or have their rose-tinted nostalgia glasses glued to their face -oldschool "true" gamers-. [/rant]

This is not say that everyone who enjoy these "classic" games are blind fanboys. It's just that sometimes the praising can indeed reach ridiculous heights. And it's not just the old names that fall victim to this treatment, but some of the newer, hip titles as well (I'm looking at you, Portal).