Subjectivity is a big part of what drives the game industry. Another part of it is just shoving crap down the consumer’s throat, which is best saved for a whole other rant. For right now I want to focus on subjectivity and opinions based on experiencing certain games.

The internet is prime real estate for loyalists and agitators alike to mouth off to each other in heated discussions based on the most trivial of features. A common scenario in the game forum scene is for the hive mind to take effect, giving a newcomer the opportunity to witness the sheer lack of social skills demonstrated when up to dozens of nerds will jump all over somebody for having a different take on a beloved entity. With that in mind, I will take this opportunity to look at three of the games I consider to be the most bafflingly successful and popular that I’ve personally played, and take a little time to explain why, despite being known to many as classics, these games are sickeningly terrible.

For this particular list, I’ll be looking at games released in the mid to late ’90s. Expect more of these down the road. Oh, and another thing: if you start reading and this feature pisses you off because you happen to enjoy these games, I’m glad. I’m glad I pissed you off. Maybe it will allow you to do a little self-assessment and see where you’ve been wrong about what you thought you liked for your whole life.

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It became painfully apparent recently that I’m in the minority in the modern game forum communities when it comes to DLC, or downloadable content as it’s known to non-fags. Downloadable content is honestly nothing new as it’s been a perk of PC gaming for at least a decade now. Here’s a rough idea of how this works:

1. Game comes out
2. Somebody decides said game could have used more little side quests, characters, options, etc.
3. Said side quests, characters, options, etc. are created and released at a later date in the form of a downloadable package
4. Game experience enhances with downloaded extras added on to it

Like I said, this is nothing new. In fact, Capcom more or less did the same thing on an arcade cabinet level with the Street Fighter II games. Capcom ever-so-slightly added little tweaks to SFII’s gameplay, with different and added moves, characters, stages, and even endings. Of course, if we knew then what we know now, we would have realized they spent years just selling us glorified ROM hacks and then seemed surprised when people became interested in Mortal Kombat and its sequels for offering vastly improved graphics and gameplay with each installment (albeit to a rather basic concept). Meanwhile Capcom just sort of... changed some colors and sound effects.

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Reinventing a series for a new generation is nothing new. Star Trek does it once in a while, Star Wars did it and is continuing to do it, and Gundam manages to crank out a new series every couple of years. So it shouldn’t be a surprise when Macross, as popular as it was so long ago, tries to reinvent itself. Hell, even Voltron’s getting a movie, right?

Macross, for those not in the know, was brought to North America as part of Robotech. It’s kinda complicated, and also not the point of this article.

With few exceptions, remakes tend to be a terrible idea. For every “The Next Generation”, “The Empire Strikes Back” or John Carpenter’s “The Thing” we get dozens of Gundam SEEDs, Star Wars Prequels or, well, Macross Frontiers.

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For critics, there seems to be some sort of calculable rule which states that, "The quality of a game is inversely proportional to the amount of backtracking required therein." I have always thought that this assertion was pretty flawed, but then, I spent most of my early gaming years playing titles like Myst and Resident Evil.

Under the boardwalk, down by the sea, yeah.

At the outset of any good adventure game, players are met with a seemingly expansive environment to explore, but with only one or two pathways currently unlocked. All other avenues will be blocked off and require some sort of item, knowledge or ability to open. Thus, the player is forced to explore the few locations available until he or she finds a way to open up the next area.

This is called backtracking, if you hadn’t already figured that out from the title, and it is a staple of any healthy adventure gamer’s diet. In Resident Evil, for instance, once you’ve found that shield key you were looking for, you will have to retrace your steps to find every door that it unlocks. Even while you’re doing that, you’re certain to find other doors and puzzles along the way that require some other sort of item or key to unlock. By now you will have realized that you will be repeating this back and forth process multiple times throughout the game, and you are either loving it or ready to scratch your eyes out.

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Daniel B. figures he’ll write this now, seeing that the fourth one is just a hop-skip away from doing it all over again (And he will love every minute of it).

I’ve stopped playing Persona 3. Don’t get me wrong, I love RPGs (which has led to a certain degree of shoulder chaffing with another author of this website. I do have to concede a point to the bastard, though, even if he suggested men of my tastes carry certain unmanly heirs); especially ones where I can live out my past high school fantasies of banging whoever I want and running around at night shooting myself.

In an effort to get my money’s worth out of essentially buying the same game twice (with that tacked on FES acronym, whatever the fuck that means), I decided I was going to challenge myself to complete the game’s hard setting—you would figure that’s why the game has a hard mode. What I neglected though, is how a game that’s really about spreadsheet functions with massive assets (read: cartoon girls and their tits) actually calculates difficulty. About the same way as a calculator: Fucking scientific notation.

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Mega Man 9 came out on Monday for the Wii Virtual Console, and since then there have been people both praising and criticizing it for its apparently insurmountable difficulty. It has even become a goddamn Internet meme!

Personally, I think you're all a bunch of pussies.

My entire experience with the Mega Man series up until last night amounted to about 20 minutes that I spent with a ROM dump of Mega Man 2, yet I'm already half-way done Mega Man 9. No, it's not an easy game, but its difficulty is hardly noteworthy when compared to other classics from the same era that it is unabashedly trying to emulate.

It's common knowledge that kids these days don't know the meaning of difficult when it comes to video games. Play Halo on "Legendary" and then play Contra 3 without the Konami code and then tell me which is harder. But it isn't the new generation of gamers that is playing Mega Man 9. This game is aimed squarely at those gamers who are aged 20 and up; those who supposedly grew up with this type of game and should therefore be used to the challenge.

Yet still you bitch. Did you simply forget how hard games used to be, or are you too used to having all of your classic games memorized? It's a lot harder when you don't know where every single enemy or power-up is, isn't it?

And all this time, you've been lecturing younger gamers on how much harder the games you used to play were, and then mocking them when they inevitably suck at a 20-year-old game that they've never played before. Yet clearly you haven't experienced a real challenge yourself since 1989. You've been pussified by your own stagnation and false sense of superiority.

To be good at something is not to be able to memorize and repeat; it is to be able to overcome new obstacles as they present themselves. (Goddamn if I'm not a regular-fucking philosopher.)

Now, if it's MM9's list of challenges that you're talking about, then I'll concede. Trying to clear the entire game without taking any damage is going to result in you getting your ass kicked. But I know that most people, when referring to the "tremendous difficulty," are talking about the game itself. However, I can name five games from recent memory that have given me more grief: Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Halo 3 on "Legendary," Metroid Prime 3: Corruption on "Hyper Mode," Nanostray 2 and Alien Shooter Vengeance (the final level of which would leave an ordinary man soiled and in tears).

Like I said, I'm practically a Mega Man virgin and yet I'm blowing through MM9 at a steady pace. Why is this game getting so much credit for its difficulty level? I've played turn-based RPGs with more challenge than this—a genre typically intended for girls and men with vaginas, but I make it my responsibility to be well versed in all aspects of- oh fuck it. I just really liked Final Fantasy X, okay? Why can't you just accept our love!?