My gut instinct on a game was completely wrong.

I am very surprised when this happens, but there's been a very obvious recent example which has made me make this thread.

Super Mario Odyssey's initial reveals put me firmly in the uninspired camp. The gameplay just looked like a fairly logical evolution of the 3D-Mario formula (which it is I suppose), but the art style seemed to me ugly and slipshod. I couldn't quite believe Nintendo would make something as underwhelmingly grey as Metro City, or garishly, intensely red as the Sand Kingdom. Dinosaur land looked like a fan-made high-res texture skin of something better, and the T-Rex itself looked too incongruously realistic and unimaginatively realised at that.

Don't get me started on Deep Woods.

But then I played it and I wouldn't have it looking any other way. The variety and surprise of the environments is consistently engaging, and the actual execution and detail is superb (the chunky, fisher-price-toy textures of The Lost Kingdom! The just-so rust and deterioration on the green-tubes! The varied lighting and weather effects and skyboxes in the little bonus worlds!). It might be one of my favourite looking games overall, ever.

I was wrong and the aesthetic only made sense as part of the whole when played through.

I find I get this a lot with Nintendo games (Skyward Sword looked insipidly pastel-hued and spare to me initially, now it's one of my favourite Zelda-looks?).

I'm not sure if it's because we have a different, action-oriented focus when playing compared to looking at screenshots/preview videos, or just because the harmony of the visuals with music and sound and gameplay adds so much - but the difference in my impression is stark.

What games (their aesthetic or otherwise) did you get wrong, or grow to appreciate in a way you can't un-see now? How can I be so wrong so often?

I'm genuinely very glad you realised your incorrect opinion was wrong

The time I'll admit my gut instinct was wrong was with the Souls games. I bought Demon's Souls on release thinking I would like it

Minecraft
I just didnt understand it when it started doing the rounds here, it just looked like the stupidest, ugliest, most pointless thing ever. It eventually got a proper release and version 1.0 was out so I decided to give it a go. My first world was a bit gooseberry fool, I spawned in a desert and there was strawberry float all to do, so I tried again and made a new world. This time I spawned where there were tress to interact with so I was able to start doing stuff straight away and I didnt spawn miles away from my house every time I died. 5 version of the game and thousands of hours later its safe to say I totally misunderstood the game when I first saw it. I love it and it is a truly magical thing.

Yeah Minecraft is a good shout for me too. I thought it would just be like Lego, little did I know it would form the basis of hundreds of hours of couch co-op with me and my best mate, endlessly striving to realise our construction ambitions

Spec Ops: The Line. That name...that box art...the genre...ugh. Turns out it’s strawberry floating amazing.
Binary Domain. That name...that box art...the genre...ugh. Turns out it’s strawberry floating amazing.

deathofcows wrote:I am very surprised when this happens, but there's been a very obvious recent example which has made me make this thread.

Super Mario Odyssey's initial reveals put me firmly in the uninspired camp. The gameplay just looked like a fairly logical evolution of the 3D-Mario formula (which it is I suppose), but the art style seemed to me ugly and slipshod. I couldn't quite believe Nintendo would make something as underwhelmingly grey as Metro City, or garishly, intensely red as the Sand Kingdom. Dinosaur land looked like a fan-made high-res texture skin of something better, and the T-Rex itself looked too incongruously realistic and unimaginatively realised at that.

Don't get me started on Deep Woods.

But then I played it and I wouldn't have it looking any other way. The variety and surprise of the environments is consistently engaging, and the actual execution and detail is superb (the chunky, fisher-price-toy textures of The Lost Kingdom! The just-so rust and deterioration on the green-tubes! The varied lighting and weather effects and skyboxes in the little bonus worlds!). It might be one of my favourite looking games overall, ever.

I was wrong and the aesthetic only made sense as part of the whole when played through.

I find I get this a lot with Nintendo games (Skyward Sword looked insipidly pastel-hued and spare to me initially, now it's one of my favourite Zelda-looks?).

I'm not sure if it's because we have a different, action-oriented focus when playing compared to looking at screenshots/preview videos, or just because the harmony of the visuals with music and sound and gameplay adds so much - but the difference in my impression is stark.

What games (their aesthetic or otherwise) did you get wrong, or grow to appreciate in a way you can't un-see now? How can I be so wrong so often?

Couldn’t agree more with this.

In Dark Souls the opening area is pretty terrible and I really thought I'd made a huge mistake buying it, thankfully its short lived and the game opens up properly.

Mario + Rabbids the thread

Buffalo wrote:Spec Ops: The Line. That name...that box art...the genre...ugh. Turns out it’s strawberry floating amazing.
Binary Domain. That name...that box art...the genre...ugh. Turns out it’s strawberry floating amazing.

Ooh good one on Spec Ops, I don't think anyone expected that to be one of the most fascinating things to happen to storytelling in AAA games.

I really should get round to Binary Domain, have it from when they gave it away on Steam.

OrangeRakoon wrote:I'm genuinely very glad you realised your incorrect opinion was wrong

The time I'll admit my gut instinct was wrong was with the Souls games. I bought Demon's Souls on release thinking I would like it

Photek wrote:In Dark Souls the opening area is pretty terrible and I really thought I'd made a huge mistake buying it, thankfully its short lived and the game opens up properly.

Request; can you guys get on Pedz's case so that he goes through the same epiphany ;D

(and on Metal Gear Solid and the Donkey Kong Country sequels and on racing games and)

Jazzem wrote:Request; can you guys get on Pedz's case so that he goes through the same epiphany ;D

(and on Metal Gear Solid and the Donkey Kong Country sequels and on racing games and)

I think you misunderstood, my gut instinct was that it would be a good game

But I shall totally fight the good fight for MGS

OrangeRakoon wrote:

Jazzem wrote:Request; can you guys get on Pedz's case so that he goes through the same epiphany ;D

(and on Metal Gear Solid and the Donkey Kong Country sequels and on racing games and)

I think you misunderstood, my gut instinct was that it would be a good game

But I shall totally fight the good fight for MGS

Ha! My bad, I should probably read the spoiler text before quoting in future <_<

Demon's Souls.

I really wanted to like it since it was getting so much praise in gaming press, I even bought the US import in case it didn't come out here but I played as far as the first boss a couple of times and just wasn't enjoying it.

Fast forward to Dark Souls being released and two guys on my team at work talked about it non stop and I hated the feeling of being out of the loop but I wanted to finish Demon's before playing Dark so I went back to Demon's again and somehow it just clicked that time and I beat it.

I'm really glad I gave it another go and to date even after having beat every other Soulsborne game and even a couple of clones I still rank beating Demon's Souls as one of my crowning achievments as a gamer.

F1 World Grand Prix on the N64. I thought it would be amazing, you could crash into the tyre walls and tyres would fall out.

What it actually was, was about 9fps and because the N64 could only do analogue steering it had some weird double tap accelerator. Genuinely one of the worst games I have ever bought.

Honourable mention to No Man's Sky. I was expecting some kind of Elite style experience and being able to at least see other players. I'll never forget how shallow it was on release.

GTA:IV

I strawberry floating loved GTA3, Vice City and San Andreas. When GTA:IV was announced, I was properly excited, almost like a kid again. The trailer (to me at least!) looked like a real city, the upgrade from the PS2 era was going to be astonishing, this was the future!

And yeah, it was gooseberry fool. I remember not enjoying San Andreas at first and so tried many time to go back to 4 to see if I could get to like it and it just never clicked with me, a big fat meh.

GTA:V clicked almost straight away though, so I have forgiven Rockstar.

captain red dog wrote:F1 World Grand Prix on the N64. I thought it would be amazing, you could crash into the tyre walls and tyres would fall out.

What it actually was, was about 9fps and because the N64 could only do analogue steering it had some weird double tap accelerator. Genuinely one of the worst games I have ever bought.

Honourable mention to No Man's Sky. I was expecting some kind of Elite style experience and being able to at least see other players. I'll never forget how shallow it was on release.

I think your cart must have had a defect because F1WGP was ace. 93% rated in N64 Mag.

I don't have an answer for this thread at the moment.

Drumstick wrote:

captain red dog wrote:F1 World Grand Prix on the N64. I thought it would be amazing, you could crash into the tyre walls and tyres would fall out.

What it actually was, was about 9fps and because the N64 could only do analogue steering it had some weird double tap accelerator. Genuinely one of the worst games I have ever bought.

Honourable mention to No Man's Sky. I was expecting some kind of Elite style experience and being able to at least see other players. I'll never forget how shallow it was on release.

I think either your cart must have had a defect because F1WGP was ace. 93% rated in N64 Mag.

I don't have an answer for this thread at the moment.

Agree. It was a great game. No idea what game CRD was playing!

Splatoon - Looking at all the reviews and the praise it was receiving, I really couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Seemed like a very slight game just with a nice Nintendo sheen applied on the top. Bought Splatoon 2 and realised I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Where multiplayer gaming is concerned what can appear on paper as very little turns into something fantastic.
The Last of Us multiplayer on paper should be terrible as it has limited maps, no character variation and a pretty spartan crafting system but in reality it was amazing and kept the GRCade team going for years and crossed from PS3 into the PS4.

still wrote:

Drumstick wrote:

captain red dog wrote:F1 World Grand Prix on the N64. I thought it would be amazing, you could crash into the tyre walls and tyres would fall out.

What it actually was, was about 9fps and because the N64 could only do analogue steering it had some weird double tap accelerator. Genuinely one of the worst games I have ever bought.

Honourable mention to No Man's Sky. I was expecting some kind of Elite style experience and being able to at least see other players. I'll never forget how shallow it was on release.

I think either your cart must have had a defect because F1WGP was ace. 93% rated in N64 Mag.

I don't have an answer for this thread at the moment.

Agree. It was a great game. No idea what game CRD was playing!

+1

Absolutely loved F1WGP. It was a great F1 game for its’ time.

I bought Fallout 3 in 2008 at launch and struggled to get into it. After leaving the vault I just couldn't understand the game mechanisms and I had no appreciation of the scale of the game. I wandered away from it.

Started afresh in 2012 and everything clicked. I played through the whole adventure, including the DLC expansions, and it became one of my all-time favourite games .

Rex Kramer wrote:Splatoon - Looking at all the reviews and the praise it was receiving, I really couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Seemed like a very slight game just with a nice Nintendo sheen applied on the top. Bought Splatoon 2 and realised I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Yep, same.

I had it on the Wii U but never gave it the proper time it deserved, especially in multiplayer.

When the sequel was revealed I though meh but I ended up getting it in a bundle when I got my Switch. 160 hours later and it’s my favourite Switch game.