What genres do you like/not like?

1

This was inspired by everyone talking about how great Insurgency is, then the game promptly not selling out quickly and going the way of State of Anarchy, etc. My initial thought was that maybe not many people here enjoy FPS games (I know I’m not that big a fan of them), but then I decided to make a poll to see what genres people here like. I tried to include all the different genres I could think of, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed some (hopefully, the poll is good enough). If you have trouble picking a “favorite” genre, think “what genre would I like to see more of in the coin shop/front page” and select based on that. Who knows; the staff may even be able to shift focus on a certain genre if one gets the most votes (I doubt it, though).

First, which genre do you like the most:

  • FPS/Third Person Shooters
  • 2D Platformers (includes Metroidvania)
  • 3D Platformers
  • Collectathons (can be platformers or not, 2D or 3D; includes Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, Fluidity, etc.)
  • Overhead shooters (e.g. Super Trench Attack, Guerrilla War, Ikari Warriors, etc)
  • SHMUPs (also includes bullet-hells)
  • Puzzle games (fixed, intuitive mechanics; puzzles involve using mechanics to reach clearly-defined goal)
  • Physics-based games (similar to puzzle games, but similar actions can result in different outcomes; includes World of Goo, etc.)
  • Adventure games (includes point-and-clicks, usually more focused on exploration/discovery and “puzzles” are more ambiguous/unintuitive, like Secret of Monkey Island and Antichamber)
  • Action-adventure (like A Link to the Past; includes “action” RPGs)
  • Action-adventure (like Beyond Good and Evil, in that it’s not really a true action-adventure game and is more of a jack-of-all-trades-with-a-focus-on-neither-action-nor-adventure game; in the case of Beyond Good and Evil, it focused on stealth the most)
  • Traditional RPGs (Bravely Default, Lunar: The Silver Star, Cyber Knight, Chrono Trigger, FFXIII-2, etc.)
  • Tactics RPGs (also turn based, but units are on a map and must be moved to the opponent’s units to attack; includes Advance Wars, Valkyria Chronicles, etc.)
  • RTSs (Warcraft, Starcraft, Pikmin, etc.)
  • Card games (Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic: The Gathering, Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, etc.; separated from other genres due to the random nature of the battle system)
  • Horror (can be Survival or not; includes Resident Evil, Silent Hill, etc.)
  • Beat-em Ups (includes Hack 'n Slash games since I’m pretty sure they’re the same thing)
  • Fighting games
  • Roguelikes
  • Other (please specify)

0 voters

Now, which genre do you like the least:

  • FPS/Third Person Shooters
  • 2D Platformers (includes Metroidvania)
  • 3D Platformers
  • Collectathons (can be platformers or not, 2D or 3D; includes Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, Fluidity, etc.)
  • Overhead shooters (e.g. Super Trench Attack, Guerrilla War, Ikari Warriors, etc)
  • SHMUPs (also includes bullet-hells)
  • Puzzle games (fixed, intuitive mechanics; puzzles involve using mechanics to reach clearly-defined goal)
  • Physics-based games (similar to puzzle games, but similar actions can result in different outcomes; includes World of Goo, etc.)
  • Adventure games (includes point-and-clicks, usually more focused on exploration/discovery and “puzzles” are more ambiguous/unintuitive, like Secret of Monkey Island and Antichamber)
  • Action-adventure (like A Link to the Past; includes “action” RPGs)
  • Action-adventure (like Beyond Good and Evil, in that it’s not really a true action-adventure game and is more of a jack-of-all-trades-with-a-focus-on-neither-action-nor-adventure game; in the case of Beyond Good and Evil, it focused on stealth the most)
  • Traditional RPGs (Bravely Default, Lunar: The Silver Star, Cyber Knight, Chrono Trigger, FFXIII-2, etc.)
  • Tactics RPGs (also turn based, but units are on a map and must be moved to the opponent’s units to attack; includes Advance Wars, Valkyria Chronicles, etc.)
  • RTSs (Warcraft, Starcraft, Pikmin, etc.)
  • Card games (Yu-Gi-Oh, Magic: The Gathering, Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, etc.; separated from other genres due to the random nature of the battle system)
  • Horror (can be Survival or not; includes Resident Evil, Silent Hill, etc.)
  • Beat-em Ups (includes Hack 'n Slash games since I’m pretty sure they’re the same thing)
  • Fighting games
  • Roguelikes
  • Other (please specify)

0 voters

Note that “Sandbox” games aren’t included since they can span different genres (GTA=Third person shooter, The Elder Scrolls=Action RPG, etc.) and only really define that there’s a bunch of optional stuff you can do compared to traditional Action Adventure games. Also, Automatic Runners and Stealth games weren’t included because polls couldn’t have more than 20 options.

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2

With Insurgency, I suspect it’s more that everyone who’s interested in that style of FPS games already owns it xP

3

Racing games are probably my favorite, as long as it’s less realistic (think Outrun). Puzzle games and fighting games are also up there.

I generally dislike horror games, they’re just boring for the most part. I’m still not a huge fan of multiplayer fps stuff, but that has kind of changed in the last few years.

4

I guess if I had to pick just one favorite genre, it would be 2D action/platformers (Metroidvania). But I also really enjoy Tactics RPGs. I chose FPS as my least favorite because I generally hate them. Bullet hell Shmups are a close second though.

Update: I choose whichever category Dead Cells is in (see debate below).

5

I was looking for sandbox/open world, and then I read the comment.

Honestly, though, it’s my least favorite industry trend. I hate it more than regenerating health in FPS games, even.

6

This is kind of a hard question to answer and I also feel like you’ve conflated groups of games that are inherently different. Like grouping together first and 3rd person shooters is really weird to me. I love FPS games but I’m really not very fond of 3rd person shooters and then you give “overhead shooters” it’s own category? Would those not be better grouped with 3rd person shooters? They feel like they have more in common to me.

Adventure games? Antichamber and Secrets of Monkey Island has nothing what so ever in common and I’d personally list Antichamber as a puzzle game. Point & click games are their very own genre with very few overlaps in other games and “adventure” on it’s own is kind of pointless as a genre descriptor, it’s more of an additional variable to other genres in my opinion.

“Physics-based games” I would say is just an undercategory to Puzzle games. But you give Action adventure games 2 different options with one being action adventure games and one being “Beyond good and evil” I have no idea what you’re trying to differentiate here. ARPGs are also a very distinct genre that would have been better off on it’s own.

Then we go onto the RPGs, when you say traditional RPGs you appear to be thinking of JRPGs. If I were to mention a traditional RPG I’d mention titles like Baldur’s gate, Neverwinter nights, Icewind dale and of course Planescape: Torment.

I play quite a lot of games of so many sorts that picking a favourite is almost impossible. I suppose I picked FPS because they’re kind what the gaming of my youth was mostly about, so they hold a special place in my heart. But these days I don’t play them much at all, mostly I’m guessing because there have not that many titles worth playing. But when one shows up I tend to enjoy it. Shadow warrior, Wolfenstein and DOOM have all been great games that I’ve enjoyed immensely.

As for games I dislike I find you’re missing the “early access open world multiplayer survival” games, which by now has become a damn genre in and of themselves. Notable requirements are of course that the game is never to be finished. Those I hate the most.

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7

urgh, trying to define favourites/genres, -then immediately proceeds to combine fps and 3rd person shooters :confounded:

  • also Metroidvania is its own genre/type “separate” from 2d platformers even tho “linked”, hint: Mario 1+2 and Metroid aint the same deal, even Sonic and Mega Man isn’t the same thing despite both being 2d-platformers
  • and action adventure and action rpg doesn’t belong in the same bracket either nononono Link, Tomb Raider and Diablo, Grim Dawn etc doesn’t mix
  • traditional rpg?, crpg or jrpg etc?, RPG has so many subset of genres that vary wildly can’t bunch em up nor ignore them all together either
    Bard’s Tale, Ultima, Wasteland - Lunar, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy - Might & Magic, Baldur’s Gate - Zork(sry couldn’t resist adding zork in the mix lol, text adventure is o.g. rpg ;)) they are all sliiiightly different, no?
  • Horror might include Survival, but survival doesn’t = horror, Rust, Don’t starve, The Forest, Miscreated, The Long Dark, vs Resident Evil, Kholat, Amnesia, Outlast, Alien Isolation, see the difference?
  • (Brawlers)Beat-em Ups and hack 'n slash does not equal “the same genre to like”. DMC/Bayonetta isn’t really the same as Diablo or even Streets of Rage/Final Fight
  • Roguelikes, by which do “you” define “Rogue-like”? since it seems to get tossed around willy-nilly these days, because; “perma-death” :rolling_eyes:, or gets called Rogue-lite, or sometimes when in doubt people label a game both just to be sure, despite the two being separate
  • to conclude my disagreement, GTA is more a sandbox game than a 3rd person shooter since the “shooting” is tertiary in scope of the gameplay,
    3rd person shooter=Syphon Filter, Max Payne, Gears of War. GTA+Watchdogs is more an open world/sandbox “genre” than a 3rd person shooter genre.
    Just because a game is played in 3rd person and you (can) shoot from time to time, doesn’t make you a 3rd-ps

TLDR;
Point is, it’s too hard to “narrow down” genres without subgenres in order to fit “liked games” into such category, either too all encompassing and/or with just too few poll options possible too in the formatting

so impossible for me to vote
and thus my vote is ball in a cup

(edit: took so long to “proof read” my post, @Fraggles had time to swoop in and highlight a bunch of my points first)

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8

I think it could be a multiple choice poll, I chose 2D Platformers because Castlevania had a great impact on me and I’ve been playing platformers since day one of my gaming life.

And I dislike Horror games because it fails to deliver what it was supposed to deliver, that’s for me of course.

9

Some people said Insurgency was given out for free a few times (don’t know date, time or quantity) so maybe that could be why?

Alao a friend of mine said that he didn’t like the game because you can die too quickly.

10

About the like: Rogue-like ftw. We have Dead Cells, Nuclear Throne, Enter the Gungeon, The Binding of Isaac… here.

About the dislike: I don’t like Survival genre. The genre is not bad itself, but all the developers out there are “forcing me” to hate it. Everytime there is a new survival game releases, there is 99% chance it will never be finished. And I hate unfinished products.

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11

Its a nice poll but I think there are a few categories missing. As has been said racing games and survival games should be there but I think the biggest omission is MOBAs as they are very popular and really dont fit into any of these categories (maybe RTS is the closest).

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12

Wait a minute… Dead Cells clearly falls under the 2D Platformers (includes Metroidvania) category. Then again, it does have procedural generation. Does this put it in the Rogue-like category? I’m confused.

13

I’m not sure which is the best genre to describe Dead Cells, but clearly the game fits prefectly both genres you and me mentioned. Usually people call it Rogue-like metroidvania style game.

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14

Pretty hilarious that FPS is at the top of both.

I think I’ve probably put the most time in over the years with FPS and third person shooters, but I’ve probably gotten the most raw enjoyment out of RPGs. I think most of my top games are products of those two genres being mixed together in different ways. Even modern FPS games that have histories that comprise the very roots of the genre, like Doom and Wolfenstein, implement RPG elements and have richer stories.

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15

nope
i must disagree
when a game fails nearly half the criteria for Roguelike it’s not a rogue-like
Turn-based, Tile-based, Resource management, progressions does not carry over
(you can “fail”/not have some of the criterias and be a roguelike, but not that many at once)

Rogue-lite however would be more apt,
but some sense of progression must be carried over,

and if a game fails both that, it’s neither roguelike nor rogue-lite despite permadeath or procedural generation, but merely have “elements” of the style without “being it”

because of Dead Cells Metroidvania + Rogue-lite style, i really like their term Roguevania, and even if Roguelitevania is more “apt” description, Roguevania is fine/theirs enough that i wont mind
i do dislike the Souls-lite term tho, because Souls did not invent pattern based boss battles nor dodge, and i disapprove of how many souls fans think that…

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16

While I do not have full knowledge of the game and it’s structure, from what I have seen I would not call Dead Cells neither roguelike nor metroidvania or any combination thereof.

Metroidvania requires a somewhat “open world” for you to explore with areas and content that opens up as you acquire new “powers”, be that through items, spells, moves or just information. The world being a permanent place that you explore and get familiar with enough to know where to return when new tools are gained is fundamentally incompatible with the procedural generation of Dead cells and most games of rogue- like/lite. I would claim that it is this gradually unlocked explorable world that is the essence of the metroidvania, without it it can’t be.

Dead Cells appear to me, please do correct me if I’m wrong though, to be a mostly linear affair but with some options for branching paths. From the first level you appear to have 2 choices of what to play as a 2nd level and it might be that you could perhaps backtrack in order to play the other choice later. However no path is blocked to you, there does not appear to be any improvements to your abilities to traverse terrain or otherwise gain access to space you could not before.

So I would have to conclude that, based on my understanding of the term and the game, that Dead cells is not a metroidvania. As @Gnuffi states it is also not a roguelike, I would be fine calling it roguelite however.

This, of course, is not to demean Dead Cells in any way, it looks to be becoming a really great game. There’s just a problem these days with applying labels thoughtlessly with no care for definitions, some do it out of laziness others for marketing reasons and I shan’t stand for it!

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17

That’s too much of details I think. Despite the fact that the poll is not perfect, I tend to grouped Roguelike and roguelite into one because of the rogue spirit.
The truth is that it’s not easy to find how exactly Rogue-like is, or maybe like this link, look at the reply #1, a Rogue-like should contains all the requirements like that, then what you said is not enough. But I agree with you at some point, Dead Cells is more roguelite than roguelike.

Now I noticed that “open world” you mentioned, make sense. At this point there is one thing I know for sure is Dead Cells belongs to 2D game genre lol.

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18

@m0n0, i would say it’s quite “easy” to define “Roguelike”, and the definition/criteria used in reply #1 is exactly correct, however the game does not need to contain all, but most
Hence why a roguelike can be roguelike without turn or tile based, but depending on how many criteria you start to drip off, it then no longer becomes a roguelike.
and a key aspect is “true” perma-death, meaning no progression carries over whatsoever in any style, meta or otherwise

the second a “rogue”-game has any type of progression carried over to next playthrough it instantly becomes a rogue-lite, because that is the defining element of a rogue-lite(combined with some procedural generation+“perma”-death), just like if there is 0 “meta”-progression it’s no longer a rogue-lite

a game can be neither roguelike or rogue-lite despite having Rogue elements, but it needs to have at least half (imo) to be Roguelike, otherwise it doesn’t come close enough to the “spirit”, and if it has no progression, despite not meeting enough criteria to be roguelike, it doesn’t become rogue-lite either

the 2 aspects most people seem to focus on are procedural generation and perma-death, but in order to be either roguelike or rogue-lite, a game needs “more”. To be rogue-lite “only” +progression, but it still needs to be there. And to be roguelike it definitely needs a couple more than just 2, even if not all 9 tho.
otherwise it’s just (imo) a sad marketing gimmick that is exploitative and diminishing of the term and spirit

i haven’t played the game yet either @Fraggles, so i can’t say for sure, i’m just going by the description
since an “open world” can be both fixed or randomly generated it makes it no less open,
“the progressive exploration of an interconnected world” “Unlock new levels with every death and explore undiscovered parts of the castle as you prepare for the inevitable bosses” seems to fit the metroidvania description somewhat okay’ish but

By metroidVania, we’re really talking about a fixed, hand designed, interconnected world. The game takes place on an immense island that never changes. All of the biomes, bosses and the paths between them are present right from the start. Getting to them is another story…

However, in Dead Cells, death replaces the traditional backtracking mechanic of a metroidvania. At first, seemingly unreachable areas will be strewn across your path, but answers to these riddles will appear as you explore the island. Be it a key, a new acrobatic skill or a forgotten spell. Once uncovered, this knowledge will stay with you, allowing you to unlock new paths to your goal. Sick of the stinking sewers? Head over the ramparts and take a breath of fresh air! It’s your skill, playstyle and of course the loot you find that will determine your path

Having said this, we’re conscious that the words “procedural generation” conjure up images of crappy levels and uninteresting gameplay in a lot of gamers’ minds. So we’ve chosen a hybrid solution, with each run being a mashup of carefully designed “chunks” of level. The idea is to give you the feeling of meticulously handcrafted world, while making sure you have a new experience every time

the world and unlocks might be randomized but they are still present
and maybe so therefor they aren’t “hard”-met criteria, hence why the description Roguevania is fine and possible more apt than just metroidvania, since like Rogue Legacy, it takes some established elements, but distorts them enough to a “lite”(er) version
(another reason Roguelitevania/Roguevanialite would maybe have been even better to call it, even if a bit over-the-top ridiculously descriptive :smile_cat: )
Dead Cells is most indeed not roguelike but a rogue-lite, and at the same time so much more

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I agree with you at many points, I said it’s not easy to find because I mean in their definition they said “most”, but what is most, why not said exactly how many requirements need to be passed so a game can be called rogue-like? You said more than a half, but maybe someone don’t agree with that. I also read somewhere before that a Rogue-like “must” contains: turns and tiles + procedural generation + permadeath, we all know about procedural generation + permadeath, but turns and tiles is also a must, I’m not so sure but many people agreed with that as far as I remember.

20

indeed, people will have varying opinions, and qualifiers as to exactly “how much” makes it “something”, and ofc purists will have even less wiggle room for negotiation
I like to simplify it half, because, if something has “less than half” is it really what it says? To me it it doesn’t at least,
chocolate chip aint the same as chocolate ice-cream (despite chocolate chip clearly being superior :ghost:)(even tho this example really does break the “more than half rule” since chocolate ice-creams usually don’t contain that much chocolate lol)
as to the tile+turn aspect, personally i chalk that up to the limitation of the era, and thus is not a defining criteria as long as “enough” of the others are still upheld.
To me the most vital factor is the procedural generation and true perma-death(0 progression whatsoever), combined with any multiple of the other criteria. Which and how many i think is negotiable enough to let up to the “creator”, as long as “enough” criteria is met so it doesn’t get diluted. To which i think the half/“more than half” sentiment helps with that quite nicely. But in the end i’m not the all-deciding “genre-standards judge” :smile_cat:

(otherwise we’d end up having to label Minecraft a roguelike and i refuse that) :joy_cat:

But since Rogue Legacy created the “rogue-lite”, we have to look at that for what defines it,
and that’s most definitely procedural generation+“perma”-death+combined with progression, so that very much determines the standards for a rogue-lite, and is so clearly different from a roguelike, that it shouldn’t be possible to get mixed-up, yet somehow people seem to constantly anyways heh

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