Never hated the forklift. A claim without basis, common on clickbaity Kotaku.
The article is a stretch, but is is downright mundane compared to the explanations of game designs I’ve heard straight from the mouth of Japan’s rockstar designers who made them. They enjoy wearing sunglasses and black leather jackets and getting extremely abstract about game design.
I loved Shenmue for the immersive experience which was unchallenged at the time. It was the first of its kind, and for a long time no other open world game paid as much attention to detail. But its traditional gameplay mechanics were weak.
I think one famous mechanic besides 3d fighters that Yu made, was the arcade that has a vehicle you ride on.
Note to mention the click-bait and hyperbole laden writing style.
When you spend hundreds to thousands of hours mastering a game and immersing yourself in the culture surrounding it, an article on "your" game, unless it's written by someone as keyed-in to the meta as you are, is likely to come off as a series of poorly informed hot takes. In other words, generalist journalists frequently have a hard time developing the level of experience in a particular area necessary to write about it in such a way that's not laughable to the "experts". This effect is particularly bad in video games, where the amount of rabbit holes you can pour yourself into is practically uncountable. Everyone's an expert on something, and it only takes one crappy article on your pet game to destroy your confidence in anything that outlet produces, even if you lack the experience to see the lie in each and every piece.
On one hand, I understand what you're saying. For example, I'm a big fan of Evangelion, and there's a decent amount of meta context to be aware about when going into that series.
On the other hand, I think we need fresh (and even naive) looks at these older works. Shenmue, Evangelion, etc -- they should be continually reevaluated and challenged. That's the difference between a living fandom and an echo chamber of folks smelling their own farts.
Where I and others have had problems in the past tends to be around content that's less interpretive, like this, and more factual, like "a window into competitive play in ___ MMO", where, if you're a competitive player of ___ MMO, the gaps in understanding are on display front and center.
https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/04/gizmodo-media-group-is-sol...
An alternate way to say this is that these communities are incredibly insular, and the most active participants work hard to keep them that way by using their status in the group to set themselves up as gatekeepers, policing the bounds of acceptable opinion. Perspectives that differ from that of the in-group threaten their status, so they react against them violently in order to signal to the group that they're still in charge, nothing to see here, move along.
These gatekeepers also often see their "elite" status in the group as a fundamental part of their self-worth, so they interpret challenges to their ideas as attacks on them personally, and respond in kind. And it doesn't help either that gaming communities tend to disproportionately attract teenagers and young adults, who are right at that moment in life when their passions tend to run hottest.
I get thinking it's quality is middling but I've ran into a lot of opinions that go beyond that quite frequently.
1. When someone loves a game, I think they have a tendency to over-estimate how disliked some of the more unusual aspects of it are.
2. When someone loves a game, and they point out that most people don't like some aspect of that game, other people who also love that game group themselves into "most people" and then disagree with the author.
What I think is more important is that whether or not the forklifts were hated is not the point. The author's point is that the forklifts were an integral part of the narrative experience of the game, as they contrasted player experience with that of the main character. Focusing on a throw-away "so-and-so is hated" is silly.