I know I have a contrarian streak, but I never go in to a game thinking on purpose, "I plan to hate this because everyone else likes it." Indeed, I like a number of obscenely popular games (Bioshock, Portal, and the Fallout titles among them).
But then a day comes when everyone is writing about World of Warcraft.
Yeah, people. You go and enjoy that, I guess. I'll be over here with games that didn't piss me off in every possible dimension. Seriously: I disliked the art, the camera motion, the controls, the UI, and the community. That right there is a pretty big set of turn-offs. I'll never be sitting around saying that just because I don't like something, it must suck -- but it sure sucked for me.
In fact, other than a smattering of Diablo II back in the day, I don't think I've ever particularly enjoyed a Blizzard title. Blasphemy, right? It gets worse.
I've written before about me and party-based games. So also in the Annals of Unpopular Opinions, I didn't enjoy Dragon Age, and really I'm not that big on playing sci-fi environments either, so the Mass Effect titles didn't do it for me. And while I'm going all Andy Rooney and crapping on everyone's parade, I'll mention that exactly two -- 2 -- Japanese RPGs in all of gaming history have really appealed to me, and both were titles I was able to play on the DS: The World Ends With You and the re-release of Chrono Trigger. I have yet to be able to make it through more than an hour or two of any other JRPG, including each and every Final Fantasy game. I was unable to avoid observing FF13 being played in our home (only one living room, after all, and it doubles as my office / PC gaming location), and I was also unable to avoid mocking it. Constantly. That thing is beyond ridiculous.
While I'm ranting, I may as well point out that due to time / money / parental restrictions back in the day, I never played a Metroid or Mega Man title. And that I suck at racing games and loathe PvP titles.
*phew*
This has been Your Critic's adventure as a Cantankerous Old Coot. On deck after the holidays: thoughts about the Uncharted series, thoughts on the Syberia series, and an episode in which I realize partway through The Longest Journey that *this* is the game I remember playing but was unable to identify. Happy Thanksgiving y'all. :)
