Gaming Hell

Crates.

silent protagonists.

pointless gimmicks (I'm looking at you Force Unleashed, Force Lightning on a Lightsaber, really?!?)

whistlelock hates HL2.

So does BigWords.

So should I, what with all the crates in it.

Jumping puzzles.

Sociopathic protagonists who are supposed to be badasses.

minor utility type things that become way more dominant than they should (Bethesda software and its constant need to repair equipment, I'm looking at you)

Illogical penalties for success: (Now that you've conquered more territory, you earn less money from trade, as there are fewer foreign territories to trade with, and you can't earn revenue from internal trade for some reason...TOTAL WAR)

Enemies who are given super powers to compensate for the stupidity of their AI.

"Destiny" being used as an excuse to constrain character choice.

Dumb inconsistencies; like cloned soldiers who are controlled by a telepath and are completely inert without him, but yet still feel the need to talk loudly to each other.

The things I dislike in games don't really have anything to do with the kind of crates that are around or the ridiculous characters. My biggest gripe has always been with inconsistency.

- This means games with stupidly difficult puzzles, but push-over bosses or vice versa.

- To go along with easy bosses, I hate that what makes them easy is not that they have low HP or whatnot, but because they have an attack pattern that is so repetitious it makes me want to gouge my eyes out. This especially irks me with bosses that are supposed to be intelligent.

Most of the rest of my gripes are things I would personally like.

- I would like to see less linearity in dungeon design, as in hiding things that would be nice to have throughout the dungeon and eventually giving you the necessary paths and items you need to get to them, but not making a 'preferred path' through the dungeon where if you're smart you can grab everything in one go. I like replayability in dungeons and areas - especially if they're beautifully rendered and realized areas. I would love if I could just stumble back through dungeons and find new things I missed the previous time.

tarcanus said:

- I would like to see less linearity in dungeon design, as in hiding things that would be nice to have throughout the dungeon and eventually giving you the necessary paths and items you need to get to them, but not making a 'preferred path' through the dungeon where if you're smart you can grab everything in one go. I like replayability in dungeons and areas - especially if they're beautifully rendered and realized areas. I would love if I could just stumble back through dungeons and find new things I missed the previous time.

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You need nethack. Start with a dwarf valk. They're easy to ascend. Then you can work your way up to tougher characters.

Stupid protagonists in JRPGs. They are Too Dumb To Live at points. When I play these games you can often hear me pretending I'm the main hero and cursing appropriately.

Things I'm sick of?

The Good/Evil dichotomy being horribly executed in video games WITH NO MIDDLE GROUND AT ALL RAWRRAWR!

Games that have done the Good/Evil thing well are Fallout 1 and 3 and Planscape Torment.

Torment really understood the way to do evil. You could either be the normal, easily written "chaotic evil", wherein you kill people and be just an asshole. But you could also be the much more evil "lawful evil" where you don't just randomly kill and lie...you also manipulate. You manipulate and lie and be really EVIL.

I mean, name ANY other game where you can manipulate a girl into falling in love with you so that you can use her more effectively as a tool.

Now that's evil!

Zoombie said:

I mean, name ANY other game where you can manipulate a girl into falling in love with you so that you can use her more effectively as a tool.

Now that's evil!

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Bloodlines, KOTOR2 (incidentally by the same writer as Torment).
I agree though: Torment rules supreme on the game writing pantheon.

Things I am sick of: juvenile or outright laughable romance subplots. Either do them properly or leave them the hell out of your game. The most recent and big budget (and worst) example being Dragon Age. Check this out. The horror...

Our hero – one of the Grey Wardens, the group to which players will belong in an effort to fight back against the Blight, and the evil Arch Demon bringing it about – has a present for a lady, Morrigan. It’s a magical book that she has been looking for. She’s going to be very pleased to receive it. Once it’s dragged from our inventory to hers, she responds with some of the most excruciatingly dreadful flirtation I’ve ever seen. The acting is very weak, my face screwed up as I wrote the word “AWFUL” on my pad in the dark. She’s dressed as you might imagine a girl would appear on the cover of a 1980s D&D book, wearing what appear to be a couple of straps of material, most of her breasts hanging out. We can respond to her elephantine attempts at flirting by suggesting we’re open to her ideas. Once we’ve ambiguously agreed to her advances a couple of times, it cuts to a glimpse of an awkward sex scene that saw everyone in the room burst out laughing. Possibly not the desired reaction.

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Then:

This all took place in a camp – something you can create at any time while wandering the game’s open spaces, a place to recoup, get some sleep, and chat with your companions. And indeed fuck them all, apparently. Because as we emerged from our night with Morrigan, we went over to chat with the slightly more modestly dressed redhead Leliana, who it turns out is apparently our girlfriend. Leliana’s voice makes Morrigan’s seem Shakespearian. The delivery is so deeply weird, stunted and childish. Unsurprisingly she’s upset at our bedroom antics, and protests. But not with any vigour or passion, but rather damply complains that it’s not particularly nice of us to go sleeping with other women right in front of her. Acknowledging that she can’t necessarily stop us from sleeping around, she meekly asks that we either stick just with her, or have the grace to break up with her as we continue our conquests. We choose to tell her that we love her really. She immediately capitulates and welcomes us back into her arms, before you’ve washed the smell of the last woman off you. So romantic! Here my notepad reads, “Pathetic.”

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Games in which you have to keep an AI-partner alive. There are few things more satisfying than playing a game perfectly, and seeing the AI run out and attempt to kill things with their bare fists, only to be absolutely slaughtered.

Final Fantasy Tactics's Rafa immediately comes to mind.

Cutscenes that you can't skip are kinda ridiculous too.

BigWords said:

Max Payne 2. Mona bloody Sachs. I popped her in the head with the handgun after she screwed up for the third time.

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Ico. Well the girl didn't really have an AI, which made things worse. I raged so much at that game.

best romantic subplot is still in Torment.

But, then again, I go ga ga for girls with tails...and redheads...and scottish accents...

<goes all dreamy eyed>

SharkGelli said:

Games in which you have to keep an AI-partner alive. There are few things more satisfying than playing a game perfectly, and seeing the AI run out and attempt to kill things with their bare fists, only to be absolutely slaughtered.

Final Fantasy Tactics's Rafa immediately comes to mind.

Cutscenes that you can't skip are kinda ridiculous too.

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Final Fantasy Tactics spoilers!





Rafa was such a broken fight. As if you didn't have a hard time with the already broken Velius, you entered the only way a battle could get harder. By having it end before you even got a turn!

I'm sick and tired of all these FPS games where we're all bad ass space marines with unshaven chins, a chest the size of a buick and guns so big you'd think the MC was compensating for something. Then on the other end, we have the overly sexual females that are so freakin' annoying it makes me want to punch them in the face and tell them to put more clothes on!

Where are the Joanna Darks in FPS games? (No, the remake for Xbox 360 doesn't deserve the Perfect Dark name) Where are the super expansive levels ala Turok and Turok 2? What about Turok's creative weaponry. Or a decent spy game like Goldeneye?

I'm getting fed up with "Generic FPS shooter with too much blood and enemies that don't even flinch when shot" Can't we do better than this? Why do I need to be a space marine fighting aliens in super advanced power armor? Can't I be a nerd with a crowbar like in Half Life?

I honestly haven't found an FPS game that made me want to finish it since the days of Goldeneye, Perfect Dark and Halflife. I almost finished the first Halo, but something was off with that game. I've played Deadspace. Resistance. All of those. I've been searching for an awesome experience and I just haven't found it.

And while I'm on my soapbox. What the crap is up with women in games? No wonder some of the guys I hang out with think women are objects. Becuase that's what they are in most games. Something to have sex with, see thier riduclously portioned chest and rear-end and dismiss at one's earlies convenience.

Now don't get me wrong. I enjoy seeing scantily clad women as much as the next guy. But can't we have some substance? And not a woman thrown in for the sex appeal? You know. Something like plots.

Oh wait. Not much of those in FPS games now'a days...

/end rant

I think the good/evil Karma system in fallout 3 to be one of the larger flaws in the game. The 'evil' choices seemed arbitrary and pointless. for example, blowing up the town. You get basically the same reward for blowing it up as you do saving it, blowing it up is probably more difficult as you have to travel all that way to tenpenny tower at a presumably low level, and you've basically sacrificed a bunch of merchants for nothing. And then there's the superhero quest, where if you want the special melee weapon, you do the evil quest, and if you want the special energy weapon, you do the good quest. That seems pointless and arbitrary as well.

SharkGelli said:

Games in which you have to keep an AI-partner alive. There are few things more satisfying than playing a game perfectly, and seeing the AI run out and attempt to kill things with their bare fists, only to be absolutely slaughtered.

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Indeed. I totally agree.

Also, lousy camera can really kill a game. Some games are nearly unplayable because the camera angles are so bad.

I hate it when I accidentally switch the control button set-up, or someone else does and doesn't tell me.

Installation limits.
I have no objection to having to have the original disk. I understand that pirates do exist. However, computers crash. Computers get upgraded. Files get corrupted. For them to claim it's piracy protection that makes me unable to reinstall the game that I bought; it's them stealing from me. Either refund my money or let me reinstall. (Joymania's Knights and Merchants)

While I'm at it I'll add, not listing proper system requirements. It was very aggravating to get to the end of the first Prince of Persia only to find that the last gondola was broken and wouldn't swing, so I could never reach it. I called the company. They had no way to patch it and told me to buy a computer with more recent upgrades as in not on the market when the game was released. I never even considered buying any of their subsequent releases.

Zoombie said:

I mean, name ANY other game where you can manipulate a girl into falling in love with you so that you can use her more effectively as a tool.

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LIFE?

Life's not a game, though.

I mean, name ANY other game [...]

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scottishpunk said:

Also, lousy camera can really kill a game. Some games are nearly unplayable because the camera angles are so bad.

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Rockman X7.

Actually most 3D platformers. I hate Daxter right now because the camera won't pan up like I expect it to when I jump up.