/v/ - Can a video game be 'bad' objectively?

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Can a video game be 'bad' objectively? Anonymous 11/13/2025 (Thu) 01:48:02 Id: f89ed6 No. 1929235

I got into a discussion the other day with someone defending Halo: Combat Evolved and TES: Skyrim as great games. This wasn't a normalfag from what I could tell, it was someone who would otherwise be considered a rather competent gamer. That's why I was surprised such a conclusion was made. I recall a time not too long ago when these two games were considered bad. Not bad in the same way as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde NES, Big Rigs Over the Road Racing, or Mystery of the Druids, but bad in the sense that these two games are degenerative from what came before. Will explain what I mean here. Starting with Skyrim. Take for example what came before it. Oblivion, and then Morrowind before that. For anyone who played Morrowind, you can tell that Oblivion itself was a step down from it. Skyrim being a further disconnect from even Oblivion exacerbates the departure that the Elder Scrolls series took. The only metric that one can say the series has improved on is graphical fidelity. Gameplay suffered, without a doubt. Soundtrack stayed the same quality, as Jeremy Soule is always amazing >Less spells >Skills dumbed down or removed >Conversations dumbed down and made into quick one-sentence summaries >Quests dumbed down to the extreme >Copy + Pasted dungeons and fetch quests With this said, you'll still get people who say <But I had fun with it! Skyrim is my favorite RPG! People who have played Oblivion and even Morrowind might say this. Not just normalfags who have never played any of the older entries. They will argue that streamlined mechanics make a game more accessible and thus more 'complete'. Well, besides the bugs that are inherent to any Gamebryo game, you can say that Skyrim is worse than Oblivion and Morrowind, but can you really say it's a bad game? Let's look at Halo: CE next. This was released on Xbox first in 2001. It's an FPS game, first game in what will be later known as the Halo Series. I cannot compare it to previous 'Halo' games as such so I'll instead compare it to other FPS games that came before it. Quake, Unreal Tournament, Half Life, Counter Strike, among others. What did Halo fail to do that its predecessors did? >Only two weapons at a time >No movement options (can only walk + drive, no rocket jumping or bhopping) >Zero modding support Yet many will nowadays claim Halo: CE was groundbreaking, a trendsetter, a new standard. As a result, FPS games that came after all modeled themselves after Halo until Call of Duty 4 came out, and everyone modeled themselves after that. Can this really be considered a good game if it ended up being a less mechanically-complex game than titles that came well before it? It's not like Microsoft + Bungie didn't have the money for it...did they? With that said, is Halo: CE allowed to be considered a bad game? How much streamlining can a game suffer before one can finally have the right to call a spade a spade - or in this case, a shitty game a shitty game?

Anonymous 11/14/2025 (Fri) 13:47:20 Id: 54fa93 No. 1932996

>>1929235 I think a game is objectively bad when it fails to be what it set out to be, and mostly importantly, fail at being entertaining. Both Skyrim and Halo succeeded in being what they were and most important of all they are entertaining games, if they weren't they wouldn't be popular On an semi-unrelated, stop worshipping complexity, Morrowind's RPG systems were full of flaws and I'm not even only talking about the hit rate system. You should admire a hammer for its ability to hit a nail comfortably and effectively, not over its derangedly designed handle that you have to study to then finally hit a nail

Anonymous 11/14/2025 (Fri) 14:16:34 Id: 9c2a83 No. 1933053

>first pic You can always spot midwits because they praise Morrowind's infamous RNG miss mechanic to be le ebin contrarians, but neglect to mention its undisputably superior (if still flawed) damage mitigation formula as they didn't actually play the game. Malus points for misunderstanding how level scaling works in Skyrim on the most basic level, aka zone scaling and individual enemy scaling, let alone the finer details such as NPC classes.

Anonymous 11/14/2025 (Fri) 20:13:11 Id: 3c0b88 No. 1933866

The issue with games in a series, like Skyrim, is that the overwhelming majority of people are going to judge it based on other games in the series, which is perfectly reasonable. However, just because a game is worse than other games in a series, that doesn't necessarily make it a BAD game by itself - it just makes it worse than its other entries. Is Skyrim a bad game by itself? No, I would say it's a perfectly serviceable hack n slash adventure game to screw around in. It's just that a bunch of people will say that Daggerfall/Morrowind/Oblivion/whatever are better, and that's perfectly fine. Also, while being able to fuck up the casting of spells while you're fatigued makes a bit more sense, attacks being able to miss when the actual swing of the weapon makes full physical contact with an opponent is a fucking retarded mechanic and you cannot convince me otherwise. I'm glad they got rid of that shit.

Anonymous 11/14/2025 (Fri) 21:56:14 Id: bbbc8a No. 1934127

Gacha p2w microtransaction filled slop yeah, absolutely bad both for the direct players via it being itself and other games players as a result of poisoning the industry.

Anonymous 11/15/2025 (Sat) 00:06:09 Id: b19b92 No. 1934329

>>1929235 To measure whether a game is bad or good you must ask what a game is supposed to do A shovel that burns well is Good kindling but does not make it a good shovel. This is obvious because a shovel has a clear and defined purpose If we were artic explorers who could carry very little in our packs a shovel that burns well may well be the exact thing we need, and therefore a good shovel, in that it is the shovel that is good for the journey To ask if a game is good or not is a folly because people want different games to do different things. Even the individual wants multiple different games Halo and skyrim likely served the purposes of your friend and so were good to him

Anonymous 11/15/2025 (Sat) 00:12:17 Id: ac9411 No. 1934339

>>1929235 More or less. You can argue the validity of standards but it is possible to create quality standards that can be evaluated objectively.

Anonymous 11/15/2025 (Sat) 14:21:10 Id: 022b08 No. 1935593

>>1934127 friendly reminder that you do not bully gachaniggers enough

Anonymous 11/15/2025 (Sat) 15:51:42 Id: f89ed6 No. 1935722

>>1933866 >>1929508 >>1929323 Isn't comparison merited here? In the case of Skyrim, being developed by such a high-end game developing company, why should the sequels in a series be worse than what preceded it? They have the money, the resources, and the experience to make another good entry. So why didn't they? They should absolutely be at fault, even if Skyrim is a good game in a vacuum. But we don't live in a vacuum. You can compare this to saying "Mexicans aren't as good members of society compared to White people, but they are just fine on their own", right? Why settle for less when it's perfectly reasonable to attain the best, or as close to the best as one can get? Sure, this argument doesn't really fit if the subject is the flagship game of a new developer, or if that same developer never really released a good game to begin with, but like I had made mention of in an earlier post, if some dev company is making an RTS for instance, isn't it kind of their duty to look at and play other popular or well-made RTS games and take elements from that to incorporate into their new product? If they're limited by money, fair enough, but we know Microsoft has deep enough pockets to fund whatever ventures are technologically possible for a simple game development company.

Anonymous 11/15/2025 (Sat) 16:17:16 Id: 89c05c No. 1935774

>>1935722 >post shitty OP with retarded question >a few anons give you a chance and offer polite, thought out replies >reply to them with an even shittier post full of retarded non-sequiturs and smuggled in assumptions We get it, you really hate Skyrim, now fuck off and stop with this pathetic attention-seeking behaviour.

Anonymous 11/15/2025 (Sat) 16:53:01 Id: 283bc4 No. 1935825

>>1935774 >somebody tries to actually have a conversation >reply by calling all his posts shitty while not actually contributing to the conversation being had. We get it. You have bad taste. Now fuck off and stop with this pathetic attention-seeking behavior.

Anonymous 11/15/2025 (Sat) 17:46:06 Id: af0b58 No. 1935944

>>1932996 >I think a game is objectively bad when it fails to be what it set out to be, and mostly importantly, fail at being entertaining. I agree, I was thinking the same thing. If a game sets out to be something, or convey a certain idea and fails to do so, it is not a good game, plain and simple. This goes for any kind of entertainment or craft. If someone orders a pizza and it fails to excel in any aspects of being a pizza, then it is a bad pizza. If a musician makes a rock and roll album that doesn't have any characteristics of rock, or he fails in every way to make rock music, then it is a bad rock and roll album. So if a development team sets out to make an RPG but fails to make any of the mechanics work, then it is, objectively, a bad video game and bad RPG. Entertainment does matter, though. Again, if someone orders a pizza and it comes out not looking like a pizza, but tastes great, it might not be a good pizza but its good food. So if someone makes a horrible survival crafting game where you tame animals, it may be an objectively terrible game in the survival crafting genre, but it could be entertaining as an animal racing game, and thus good in that respect.

Anonymous 11/15/2025 (Sat) 21:24:00 Id: a4bcb3 No. 1936438

>>1935944 >fail at being entertaining >an objectively terrible survival crafting game could be an entertaining animal racing game Is there a limit to that logic? If a game is a terrible adventure game, for example, but within it has a card game that's pretty good but requires stomaching the adventure part, would that spoil the good thing due to its proximity to the rest of the garden of garbage?

Anonymous 11/15/2025 (Sat) 22:33:28 Id: cc93d5 No. 1936588

You shit on Skyrim for things it removed, but you can't ride dragons in Oblivion or Morrowind. In the end, a game is more than the sum of its parts, and Skyrim, as a whole, is an enjoyable experience. Yeah there's shit in Oblivion that should've come back, including the monster diversity and such, but Skyrim itself is a pretty nice adventure. Plus, it feels smoother when you actually play it. We can judge it by the mechanics available, but more mechanics is more points of failure to give you tedious, annoying gameplay over something actually fun. I like both Oblivion and Skyrim, but just saying

Anonymous 11/15/2025 (Sat) 22:35:05 Id: cc93d5 No. 1936594

>>1936438 I mean, this is why Reddit often goes >It's a good game, just not a good X game when 'different' sequels come out. see: Breath of the Wild

Anonymous 11/15/2025 (Sat) 22:35:34 Id: f3e8b1 No. 1936598

>>1936438 Actually you just reminded me that the entirety of Timesplitters 2 could be found in Homefront: The Revolution. There were mods that went so far as to carve out the base game and leave only Timesplitters.

Anonymous 11/16/2025 (Sun) 15:33:01 Id: 496645 No. 1938498

>>1935825 >getting mad at people not taking bait off a tall building with you

Anonymous 11/16/2025 (Sun) 21:28:38 Id: acdebe No. 1939296

taste is definitely subjective but you can also condition taste simply because human subjectivity is partial to other reactions. I see it that no matter how much of an impartial, unreactionary man you consider yourself, you're bound to be subjective to any reaction that will alter what you will do next. Your 'taste' is just some building blocks you've created to set yourself apart from other people in your social sphere (tribe), it has no objective quality.

Anonymous 11/17/2025 (Mon) 14:40:37 Id: d2c7de No. 1941559

>>1938498 Saying, and actually explaining and discussing, common opinions that shitty games are shitty isn't bait, even if you are some halfchan refugee newfag.

Anonymous 11/17/2025 (Mon) 18:53:48 Id: cc93d5 No. 1942207

>>1941559 you call them common, but who holds these opinions? if you ask both the critics and the general population, a lot of them will agree Skyrim and Halo are good. If you think it shitty cuz you don't like it, that's fair; we're all entitled to our own opinions. What you're doing is coming in here holding your opinion as gospel and fact, then calling those who disagree with you shit tasted. You come arguing objectivity and yes, you can have shit games, like Big Rigs, as you mentioned. Game is broken, barely functional and just not very fun. A long shot from games like Skyrim and Halo. as many Anons said, just because Y isn't as good as X, doesn't mean that Y is bad.

Anonymous 11/17/2025 (Mon) 21:44:53 Id: 283bc4 No. 1942632

>>1942207 They are common here, even if somewhat drowned out by newfags with that recent 4chan downtime. But I'm not even the guy who said it originally. I think all the Elder Scrolls games are bad, largely for reasons others have already said here. Morrowind is an objectively bad game because I can see my sword go through an enemy and still be told I missed.

Anonymous 11/17/2025 (Mon) 21:53:05 Id: 8c3435 No. 1942653

I feel like the people who talk about games being objectively good or bad also have the absolute worst taste in games.

Anonymous 11/17/2025 (Mon) 22:59:45 Id: a23704 No. 1942801

>>1929235 I have my own subjective rating system for games. >Good The game has succeeded in its objective, which is to entertain me and managed to create a lasting impression in my mind. <Example EYE Divine Cybermancy >Mediocre The game entertained me in some form but lacks something that makes it unique for me. <Example Hollow Knight >Bad The game utterly failed to entertain me on all levels, and left me angry or bored. <Example Bioshock Infinite Outlast Fallout 4 >How much streamlining can a game suffer before one can finally have the right to call a spade a spade - or in this case, a shitty game a shitty game? Honestly, it depends on your subjective interpretation of what is a shit game, is streamlining bad ? Probably, see Fallout 4, Fallout 3 and Bioshock Infinite, but I don't think is inherently bad if it fits in the game, for example, I think the ammo crafting in New Vegas could be simpler, not because its complicated system, but because it fits the simplified mechanics of F3. Is a new game with streamlined mechanics bad ? no, it's a new game, with different characters, different setting and different story, disconnected from its roots beyond its original inspiration. >Can this really be considered a good game if it ended up being a less mechanically-complex game than titles that came well before it? I never played halo, but I've played many shooters and I don't think Halo is a bad game because it has fewer features or mechanics than Quake or UT, its existence does not erase or overwrite Quake or UT, we may not get new arena shooters like them anymore, for obvious reasons, you can still play them at any time. For me Halo looks and plays like a mediocre game, and the fact that the series is basically in shambles is enough proof that I'm right about the quality of the game, the only reason why Halo got big was because it was a big fish in a small pound, so M$ milked that cow in the xbox and 360 days, now in the year of our lord 2025 the gaming landscape has changed, competition increased and everyone have their favorite genres, there is no reason to waste time, energy nor money in these AAA exclusives anymore. As for Skyrim, same thing, mediocre game. >these two games are degenerative from what came before I would have agreed with you 15 years ago, but now we are completely spoiled for choice in games, there is no reason for me to care about the state of Skyrim, its effects in the industry, or the upcoming Todd's magnum opus Skyrim 2 WE WUZ KANGS and SHIET.

Anonymous 11/18/2025 (Tue) 00:17:01 Id: 08e037 No. 1942952

>>1929235 You're talking about replay value or replayability.

Anonymous 11/20/2025 (Thu) 17:53:18 Id: c9554b No. 1951046

>>1929235 Morrowind > Skyrim > Oblivion I play Elder Scrolls for the environments and worldbuilding, not for the gameplay mechanics. Morrowind wins due to logistics of text vs voice acting. You can fit a lot more lore and story into text than audio. Morrowind had the most diverse biomes. Oblivion was too much green hills, trees, gray boulders. Skyrim was in the middle

Anonymous 11/20/2025 (Thu) 18:57:32 Id: 1a1037 No. 1951239

>>1929235 CE is an objectively well designed and good game you tremendous gabe gobbling faggot

Anonymous 11/20/2025 (Thu) 20:15:34 Id: d53a6e No. 1951431

>>1942952 Interesting graph.

Anonymous 11/20/2025 (Thu) 23:07:28 Id: d1d0b4 No. 1951779

>>1951046 Still mad we never got to see a Cyrodiil and Imperial City the way they were talked about in lore.

Anonymous 11/21/2025 (Fri) 01:03:53 Id: 2f351f No. 1952047

>>1942952 I replayed OoT about 4 times right after beating it 100% the first time. It did the same with Skyrim but only twice and Xenoblade 2 twice

Anonymous 11/21/2025 (Fri) 03:12:24 Id: 4595fe No. 1952281

>>1929235 All these arguments sound like the decade's old PC gamer's lament of consolization (see Deus Ex: Invisible War, Crysis 2, Supreme Commander 2). I used to hate this too until I stopped looking for what I wanted out of the AAA industry and looked instead at niche titles and developers and supported them instead. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=24Y58q4YCeo

Anonymous 11/21/2025 (Fri) 04:44:42 Id: de6d6b No. 1952457

>>1952281 It started with consolization and then with dumbing down no matter the platform for mass market appeal. Funnily enough the most dumbed down ones were previously PC exclusive staple games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, Minecraft and CIV.

Anonymous 11/21/2025 (Fri) 04:45:00 Id: de6d6b No. 1952458

>>1952457 Forgot Fallout and TES

Anonymous 11/21/2025 (Fri) 04:51:06 Id: 1d3b6f No. 1952466

>>1935774 Skyrim is shit because I can see all it's design flaws face front and what could have been a great game is instead a fetch quest simulator with useless loot and weak enemies tailor made for your level on the same looking dungeons.

Anonymous 11/21/2025 (Fri) 08:24:37 Id: ae8655 No. 1952968

>>1952466 >a fetch quest simulator Most of the fundamentally bad Skyrim quests are the non-fetch ones, such as the Thieves' Guild main line, and most of the quests so bugged they're borderline unplayable are also non-fetch ones. The real problems are the abysmal writing and the shitty engine, the quest design just had to adapt to those conditions. >useless loot and weak enemies tailor made for your level Both problems that were worse in Oblivion, at least Skyrim's scaling picks between somewhat hand-tuned fixed level entries instead of forcing everything to the same exact level and relying on the comically bad and inflexible stat auto-calc system. Arguably Skyrim has the opposite problem of enemies getting way too strong at high levels, in part because of health bloat in part because of a bug that gets you one-shot by kill moves when you shouldn't.

Anonymous 11/23/2025 (Sun) 06:16:21 Id: f89ed6 No. 1957925

>>1951779 How exactly were they depicted in the lore, then?

Anonymous 11/23/2025 (Sun) 17:02:10 Id: fc390f No. 1958659

>>1957925 Originally Cyrodiil had a far more tropical climate with most of the region being dense jungles full of beast-men, cults, tigers and endless dangers. The Imperial City was originally envisioned to be far larger than its final incarnation, a massive holdout of civilized power in the center of pure wilderness with each district practically being its own smaller city surround White-Gold Tower and full of numerous cults and subcultures. The entire region and its people were far more exotic and unique compared to generic medieval knights in armor, and ranged from more Hellenic-looking soldiers conquering and taming the wild lands to sometimes nearly shamanistic battlemages, many of the people in between incorporating materials like chitin and newt hide into their armor to reflect their adaptation to the region over centuries of conquest. It all has far more in common with Morrowind than other RPGs of the time, but we ended up getting one of the most generic looking bloom-filled fantasy worlds ever because that's what sold games in 2006. Mind you I love Oblivion and grew up with it but knowing what it could have been hurts.

Anonymous 11/23/2025 (Sun) 18:15:33 Id: 306811 No. 1958783

>>1957925 >How exactly were they depicted in the lore, then? Pic rel. The context behind it is that when The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard released in '98 one of the extras was a little booklet presented as an in-universe travel guide with sections covering almost every part of Tamriel. With Morrowind they sort of side-stepped the issue of having to include everything by setting it in an established sub-section with little discrete lore but even what was there they got right - about Vvardenfell, the PGE 1E basically says "it's a big island in the middle of a flooded crater with a huge volcano in it" and as a sub-region you can feasibly fudge or ignore a lot of what's there in the lore. The Morrowind section doesn't mention anything about the Telvaani being murder-happy ancap wizards but it does mention that they're clannish xenophobes even by Dunmer standards. In that case you can say "well, maybe only the Vvardenfell Telvaani are crazy about magic" or "maybe the writer didn't interact with them enough to get an accurate idea of them" or something. There's some plausible deniability there for the lore in the book not matching up precisely 1:1 with the lore in the game. Those arguments cease to hold water when the inaccuracies and mis-matches go beyond any possibility reconciliation with established lore, which is what they did in Cyrodil and why their explanation is basically "a wizard did it".

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