Current Events > Yes/No: Your opinion of a videogame is invalid if you have not played it.

(+) Yeah! (+)

In response to TLoU2, Ghosts of Sushi, and Paper Mario

Confirm, this is true for any product/experience.

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Depends. I don't need to play any gacha mobige to know it's trash.

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Yes, despite the fact that many people who would say "yes" will continue to do so.

Although, there is a difference between turning down a game due to not liking a genre or series, and outright saying it sucks. There are several types of genres I just don't enjoy, and I never liked some popular series like Metal Gear Solid or Resident Evil, but that doesn't mean they're bad games.

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I guess it depends.

Content is a big factor. I don't find "piece of shit human being" simulators to be very intriguing. I'm not going to go off on a tangent though and say that other people shouldn't be allowed to like what I don't.

Character downgrades, both real and imagined, can spoil some of the excitement for some gamers. When a character you'd previously found attractive has a weird face, bad hair, or a less impressive physique, that can mean some of the appeal.

Bad twists are another thing. I remember being outright angry when Nintendo retconned the ending to Yoshi's Island for the sake of Yoshi's Wooly World. However good the game itself might've been, it was never going to get a play-through from me for ruining the feel-good ending of its predecessor.

The one thing that nobody has a right to really talk about without having played a game is the gameplay. It's one thing if you're "sick of shooters" or some other overused genre/gameplay mechanic. But saying "it looks boring" from gameplay footage isn't really enough. It's fine if your instincts tell you it won't be fun for you personally, it's another thing if you try and tell people "This is going to be boring! Stop being excited!"

Basically, you can have an opinion. But don't try and tell others why they shouldn't enjoy the game if you haven't played it yourself.

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I mean if you watch someone else play it you can judge the story, but yeah you kind of need to experience the game in some form to have an actual opinion.

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Depends on the opinion, but generally yes. Going with TLOU2 example, there's some merit to the opinions of people who only watched the game given its story-driven nature. But those opinions come with a big fucking asterisk because they may have skipped past some gameplay segments that flesh out characters. Again with TLOU2, I've seen this exact thing where people were bashing the game for not explaining things that were explained in optional conversations or walk+talk segments. Playing vs watching a game are very different experiences too. So I feel like anyone rating a game they only watched should be up front about it.

It depends on what youre critiquing. You can just watch other people play a game to tell if you like the aesthetic, music, etc. Or watch an entire play-through to see the story.

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Deny.

Let's Players help us see the turds, so those streamers each deserve a medal of honor.

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Nah, you can make well informed opinions based on past experience and details gained from watching others play. What you can't do is say with absolute confidence a game is absolute trash from three trailers and ten minutes of gameplay.

I can watch gameplay and deduce most of the time whether or not I'll like a game. I like certain genres and certain styles of games. For instance, I like fighting games but I don't need to play Fighting Herds to figure out if it's a game I'd enjoy or not.

I also like RPGs. But I've played enough bad RPGs to know when a game is not worth investing my time into, so if I can see a bunch of characters that annoy me or are uninteresting, or a really awful soundtrack, anything that irks me, I won't waste my time with it.

Personal taste is valid. You don't have to agree with a person's taste, but a game's aesthetics are enough for someone's personal taste to have validity. Assuming the person actually has a coherent perspective and they're not just nay-saying for the sake of nay-saying.

How many people who hate on ET or Jekyll and Hyde have actually played it?

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I've never played Superman 64, but it doesn't take a genius to see that train wreck.

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BeyondWalls posted...

How many people who hate on ET or Jekyll and Hyde have actually played it?

I've played ET. Game deserves all the hate it got. Literally unplayable.

Clearly yes

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No, you can watch someone else play it. :)

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nemu posted...

Nah, you can make well informed opinions based on past experience and details gained from watching others play. What you can't do is say with absolute confidence a game is absolute trash from three trailers and ten minutes of gameplay.

Agreed.

Typically yes. You can watch gameplay and get a general idea, but the feel of the gameplay and controls may not be super obvious from watching someone play.

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i don't need to play games to know whether or not they have enough i like or (usually) don't like to know that it would or wouldn't appeal to me

for instance, fuck sticker star 3

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Bump

no, you can have an opinion based on whatever facts you know.

honestly calling an opinion invalid is just idiotic and douchey in 99% of cases

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I think in today's world, you can have a pretty good idea if you'll like something or not based on watching some streaming of it.

I think you would know if you're going to enjoy a game or not after watching 90 minutes of it being played by a streamer, for instance.

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Do I need to watch 200 episodes of Inayusha before deciding if I like it or not

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I feel like all opinions are valid, even if you have no exposure to a product, like let's say you don't like seafood, so you've never tried oyster, or you're not interested in a genre of games, so you don't feel like trying out a specific game, and so on.

but your opinion is less informed than someone who tried that thing out for themselves.

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I picked other because my answer is "mostly yes, sometimes no."

I think some games can be adequately judged just by watching a Let's Play of it. Mostly the "walking simulation" genre, but some are just so blatantly bad that you can tell. I feel pretty confident in saying that Until Dawn is a better game than Man Of Medan while Ryse: Son of Rome is a snooze.

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