For consistency sake, let’s say that any game that’s >or=7/10 at what it’s trying to do while having a popular perception of being a <5/10 game in general would count. Want to specify that this is more about the perception of the game compared to, say, a game just being really niche.
My personal Go-to for this would probably be the Callisto Protocol, because while it certainly did have some troubles at launch they were massively overblown. IMO most of the hate for it comes down to people expecting it to be Dead Space 4 with a new name, ignoring the devs the multitude of times they said that it’s something else before release, and then getting mad when it released and wasn’t dead space 4 under a new name.
Cyberpunk 2077 is the poster child for this. That game was easily 7/10 even when it came out as a buggy mess. Now that it’s had a few years of polish, it’s much better than 7/10.
But the public perception was bad mostly because of unmet expectations. I don’t know if I’d call them “unreasonable” a they were set by the devs themselves, but either way, the game was and is much better than a lot of people think.
The problem is that they advertise it a certain way and sell preorders, and then the game doesn’t live up to what they advertised. Worse, they didn’t allow anyone to review the console versions which were so unplayable that Sony removed it from the store. It would have been fine if people knew exactly what they were paying for, but they were misled.
Sure, it was unmet expectations but even if the expectation was just 'it works", they still didn’t meet it. And that’s kind of the bare minimum to even be legal when you’re charging money for it. I disagree that the console versions were 7/10 on release - more like 1/10.
I don’t know what to tell you, I played it on Xbox just fine. Played the whole game through from start to finish and had fun. I believe the issue was with last gen consoles specifically.
And again, I think a lot of the criticism was reasonable. But my point is that the game itself was and is fun, but suffers because of the bad reputation it got at launch thanks to some ill-advised (intentional understatement alert!) decisions by CDPR.
Yes, the issue was with last gen consoles. I don’t think that matters to the point I am making, nor that it worked for you personally on your setup. It worked okay for me too, but I was on a high-end PC.
Seemed to me you called the console version unplayable. You said they didn’t work. I was just correcting that statement for anyone who wasn’t aware that your were bending the truth to make a point.
Sony literally pulled the game from the PlayStation Store because of the low quality. At that point it’s not just a subjective opinion but fact, so I resent the claim that I’m bending the truth.
I played it on GeForce Now so my experience was pretty solid from the get go. I dislike open world games and I still played the hell out of that game.
It was a mess on last gen consoles. It’s it even purchasable on them anymore? I know Sony stopped selling it at one point.
I just never thought the game was very good in what it’s pretending to be.
No Man’s Sky is still, in my opinion, trying to make up for what it was on release. It’s a great game now. Not my jam as I find it far too expansive for my tastes, but I can’t knock it for what it is today. I think it’s a work of art and the seamless planet travel is pretty damn cool.
Metal Gear: AC!D
It was such a great adaptation of stealth-action, but people didn’t like that it had “Metal Gear” in the name. I absolutely adored the card collecting and deck-building, and the very deep, seemingly-emergent combos you could pull off.
I feel like Days Gone belongs in this conversation.
Man I loved Days Gone. I played through the whole game and deeply enjoyed it. I’m always surprised when I hear it getting shit talked online because it was really well done in my opinion. Maybe it was launch issues or something since I played it on PC long after release.
I’ll throw my hat into this ring with Monster Hunter Rise. I often spend my time browsing monster hunter content and almost every time Rise gets brought up it’s just to talk about how much worse it is than World. I’ll say it now, yes I also prefer World to Rise, but holy fuck do I still love Rise.
To start with, let’s compare the two. Monster Hunter is developed by 2 teams who take turns making games. World was developed by the mainline team who are known for more grounded and polished games. Rise was developed by the portable team who are known for flashier and more experimental games. Most players started the Monster Hunter series with World (it’s Capcom’s #1 best selling game of all time after all) and so going from the high detail immersive World to the action packed fast paced Rise was extremely jarring. A massive portion of the hate just comes from the fact that it was different.
Also, as you can probably guess from the name, the portable team makes games for portable systems, such as the Switch, which immediately gives them less power to work with system-wise. Couple this with the fact that Rise was developed during the pandemic, and Rise was really dealt a rough hand. Graphically it’s a massive downgrade from World, and it even ended up releasing without an ending or any non-scripted elder dragon fights.
In spite of all this, even though Rise lacks a ton of the personality and charm of World, it’s still an absolute blast to play! The combat is stellar, and while it may not have the weight World had, its fluidity and high adrenaline action makes it some of the best in the series. The sunbreak expansion especially really improved the game in every single way, fixing a ton of the issues people had with the base game. I feel that most players already moved on after base Rise and so didn’t get to experience that improvement unfortunately.
TL;DR play Monster Hunter Rise. It’s really good. Just don’t go in expecting the same experience as World.
Resident Evil Revelations 2 never gets talked about since it’s a ‘mediocre’ spinoff but i very much enjoyed it
Definitely No Man’s Sky
It was bad at launch, sure, but the expectations of the game were way outta proportion to what a game could deliver on
The problem I had with no man’s sky is that a large amount of the out of proportion expectations were a direct result of the developers over promising, rather than consumers just being over hyped.
Unpopular opinion, but I enjoyed the hell out of Redfall. It wasn’t what most people wanted from Arkane and I completely agree, but it was still a lot of fun and didn’t deserve all the hate it got. It isn’t perfect and had a ton of bugs, but the scores it received made no sense and it seemed like it was just fun to jump on the hate bandwagon.
Unpopular opinion because it’s so recent, but I think Starfield is/will be in this category
It will be if they give it some TLC like CD PROJEKT and Hello did with their games. There’s a lot to like about Starfield, but it has problems that have a big impact on gameplay. I don’t want to deal with that inventory system for the hours it will take for me to enjoy the story. In general, the menus kinda suck. They really need to work on the ergonomics.
Bethesda never does that and from what I’ve heard the modding community still won’t switch away from Skyrim. They, too, are tired of Bethesda’s shit and they already invested so much time in Skyrim to fix it up they might just as well continue.
The problem with starfield is not technical but that the writing is pretty crappy in general. Technical or feature problems can be fixed (cyberpunk or no man’s sky did it) but the story can’t be extensively rewritten without making it a different game.
Is the story that bad? I played a few hours and I was into it. Does it get worse later? I set the game aside because it was buggy and didn’t exactly run well. I’m planning to pick it up again after it gets some updates.
In the 6 or so hours I played, it was the inventory and menus that drove me crazy more than anything else. They are so poorly designed and implemented that I wonder if anyone actually played the game during testing. I can’t see myself continuing the game until they are improved.
It’s the kind of thing that the more you think about it the more flaws you find. The stories from the different factions also feel very disconnected, like Skyrim’s. Everything seems to exist in a vacuum).
But don’t take me for my word, if you already have it play the game and see if you enjoy it, that’s what’s important.
Liked the main story well enough. Not as good as Morrowind but on par with FO3/4 and Skyrim which I grade as mediocre. Starfield does have some of my most enjoyed faction quests though.
Biggest failings to me were the repetitive POIs and half finished sub systems that while functional could have been so much better. I’m still happy with my purchase and see myself playing again over the coming years but it’s understandable why so many people walked away from it.
Fallout 76.
Got a bad reputation at launch because it was so buggy, the main “quest” was lackluster and the world felt empty due to a lack of NPCs. It was genuinely in a bad state.
They’ve made loads of improvements and the game is really fun now. After the Wastelanders update, which brought NPCs and a new main quest, it started to shake off some of the negativity but I think many people are still turned off due to the launch stigma
The new Lords of the Fallen game. It was a pretty enjoyable game. There were many issues regarding online play and such, but I’ve had a great time as a soulsbourne fan.
