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Bitching Thread: Gaming Edition
Professor Snugglesworth
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Registered User regular
So I was inspired by the Bitching Thread over at GV and thought a videogame equivalent might come in handy.
The idea is simple, post here to vent about specific moments in games (use spoiler tags when needed), stuff that isn't fun but developers still want to force you to do (escort missions) or cliches that you wish would just go away (bat enemies in every RPG ever made).
To get the ball rolling, I'll start with Sin and Punishment: Star Successor, which I'm playing right now.
Late in the game, there's a segment where you're stripped of your usual abilities and are forced to play the game in a whole new way. Problem is, the boss you're fighting gives you little chance to learn the new control scheme, forcing you to restart over and over.
I don't mind a change in gameplay structure, so long as A) they give you ample time to learn the new controls and
it happens early or at least midway through the game. Not when you're near the fucking end.
And I want to give another shout-out to Sin and Punisment on Wii for being the hardest fucking game ever. I exaggerate, but I can't recall any recent games to give me this much trouble.
Essentially, it's a bullet hell shooter, a concept that works well enough on two dimensions, but becomes borderline sadistic in three. I've spent the last hour fighting who I believe is the final boss (but most likely isn't):
I don't consider myself a SHMUP pro, but I can easily tell that it's impossible to win this fight without taking damage. if I find a YouTube clip of someone beating this guy without getting hit once, I'm going to find out where he lives and punch him in the face.
Get a job, asshole.
The idea is simple, post here to vent about specific moments in games (use spoiler tags when needed), stuff that isn't fun but developers still want to force you to do (escort missions) or cliches that you wish would just go away (bat enemies in every RPG ever made).
To get the ball rolling, I'll start with Sin and Punishment: Star Successor, which I'm playing right now.
Late in the game, there's a segment where you're stripped of your usual abilities and are forced to play the game in a whole new way. Problem is, the boss you're fighting gives you little chance to learn the new control scheme, forcing you to restart over and over.
I don't mind a change in gameplay structure, so long as A) they give you ample time to learn the new controls and
it happens early or at least midway through the game. Not when you're near the fucking end.And I want to give another shout-out to Sin and Punisment on Wii for being the hardest fucking game ever. I exaggerate, but I can't recall any recent games to give me this much trouble.
Essentially, it's a bullet hell shooter, a concept that works well enough on two dimensions, but becomes borderline sadistic in three. I've spent the last hour fighting who I believe is the final boss (but most likely isn't):
Oh hai, don't mind me, just quickly regenerating my health while I throw the entire fucking universe at you
I don't consider myself a SHMUP pro, but I can easily tell that it's impossible to win this fight without taking damage. if I find a YouTube clip of someone beating this guy without getting hit once, I'm going to find out where he lives and punch him in the face.
Get a job, asshole.
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I really dislike Red Dead Redemption's movement controls. Especially in combat. Moving around a town in exploration mode is much better with the clunky controls, but it can still sometimes feel ridiculous. For example, in a town, all the buildings are raised off of the dirt ground. They're built about a foot off the ground. Now, when you want to step from the dirt onto the raised floor of the buildings, you can't. It won't allow you to. So you press jump. But instead of jumping onto the raised floor in a quick motion, the game kicks you into this long animation of Marston slowly stepping up onto the floor one foot at a time. It takes a really long time and feels silly. All I wanted to do was travel from the main thoroughfare of the town to this side building, and the game forced me to endure this really slow animation of Marston's measured climb up this one foot elevation. Any other game would just let you smoothly walk onto the raised floor, or let you jump. But RDR forces this long and pointless animation. The only time that sorta animation would be appropriate is in a cutscene of some sort, where I'm not controlling the character. Then it doesn't matter how slowly he ambles onto the building. But in actual gameplay, this sorta thing just doesn't fly with me.
Like, the general consensus of 'LAWL STARCRAFT 2 IM NOT SHELLING OUT MONEY FOR A THIRD OF A GAME'.
You know, even though if you're into RTS at all, you've been doing the exact same business model for every Relic title since 2006.
But in regards to general videogame bitching? Escort missions. Fuck. That. Shit.
Even newer titles can't get them right, as Bioshock 2 was an escort mission, and suffered greatly for it.
That said, anyone who whines about FFX's laughing scene either didn't play the game or wasn't paying attention until the awkward laughing sank in.
But that doesn't nearly annoy me as much as people who whine about the Kingdom Hearts series being nonsensical, overly flashy and abundant with characters purely for fanservice.
Way to miss the fucking point.
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But I'd rather go exploring a bit more and hey, found this wall safe to hack. I'll hack it now.
"Shepard, over here."
Yea, okay Archangel. But first, I'm gonna go over here and access some credits from this chest.
"Shepard, over here."
But I'm still exploring. And I need to refill my ammo by grabbing some thermal clips residing in this nook.
"Shepard, over here."
But there's this medikit I can pick up for 100 credits. Cause I'm awesome and never use Unity in combat.
"Shepard, over here."
But I'm still exploring this other room...
"Shepard, over here."
Goddamnit, I'm getting really sick and tired of your shit, Archang... Fuck you. I hate all Turians now.
See the problem? The incessant repeating of the developer hammering home that they want you to go over to Garrus and press A to talk to him and activate the next phase of the mission. It's like... yea, I fucking get it. I know I need to talk to Garrus to start the next phase. But I'm not doing it just yet, so quit it with the audio prompts. It's okay, I don't need it repeating every ten seconds. Just... just have Garrus say it a few times and then have him shut the fuck up. I'm not an idiot, I know that eventually, when I'm done exploring this building, I'll need to go talk to Garrus. He's the only NPC in this location that I can talk to. Who else am I gonna talk to to start the next phase? It's all very simple and basic and understandable. We don't need "Shepard, over here" repeating ad infinitum. Over and over and over again. It's annoying, okay? Have I drilled it into your heads how annoying it is? Do you find it repetitive yet? Cause guess what, that's exactly how I felt when I heard Garrus uttering "Shepard, over here" over and over again.
So I finish ME2 for the fourth time and move onto Assassin's Creed 2. It's an alright game. Kinda a lot like AC1, really. Lots o' rooftop running. Lots of traversal. It's uh, it's Assassin's Creed alright. So I'm playing and playing and eventually I get to the fine seaside town of Forli. I'm not gonna bother to do that Italian accent thing on the last letter of Forli. That's way too much effort for me, no thanks.
Um, so I get to Forli and there's this campaign mission NPC standing on the docks. And he's all shimmering and glowing and he says something like "Ezio, over here!"
See where I'm going with this story? It's the same exact problem I just described in ME2. There's a tower to climb to, there's treasure chests to loot... there's some stuff that you might want to do before going over and talking to this NPC. I'm aware of the NPC, I know I'll need to talk to him to start the next story mission, but maybe I just wanna get some other minor tasks out of the way first. But all the while, this NPC is shouting "Ezio, over here!" at you over and over again. Just idiotic. And, ya know what? You'd think BioWare or Ubisoft Montreal would be populated by gamers. You'd think they would actually play their own games once in a while and realize how annoying it is to have an NPC shouting the same audio prompt at the player over and over and over again. But no, this shit still somehow remains in the game. Or maybe they do realize it's annoying, but feel compelled to keep it in the game because they think we're all clueless and aren't capable of ascertaining what we should do next. They must think we're all retards, right? How oh how could we possibly figure out how to start the next part of the campaign if they aren't shouting this command at us every ten seconds? I dunno... it's mind boggling.
But really, why aren't there any small scale cRPG developers that realize that not everybody needs complex, fully voiced and orchestrated 100 hour epics? Why has 2D and text become so taboo?
Also, screw UE3 and it's horrible (lack of (default)) SM3.0 features leading to even most AAA developers not bothering with even a little tiny bit of AA. Not to mention textures which might be fine at sub-HD resolution yards away.
You can get the point and still not like it. The laughing scene in FFX may be purposefully bad but it is still bad. I get that Demon's Souls is supposed to be unforgivingly difficult but it did not make me like dying a dozen times and running through the same places because of it.
I kind of feel like saying DLC in general. Paid DLC at least. Not like TF2 and its free updates.
I love Mass Effect 2, one of my favorite games of probably the past 10 years, but playing any of the DLC feels really hollow, even though they're pretty good. I just hate the fact that my party members no longer say shit. I know why they did it, as getting all the actors back for a few lines in two hours of gameplay would be difficult, but it kind of takes me out of the experience when they don't comment on shit going on. Kasumi's DLC is sort of exempt as she does have dialogue in her mission as well as on all the other missions, however you can't take anyone else on her mission so it's still kind of lonely.
Firewalker was pretty much a failure altogether, but at least it didn't have to be paid for.
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Forced Stealth Sections - This is an obvious one but it needs to be said because it's always bad. I don't know if it has ever been done properly outside of games designed for stealth.
Lost Odyssey was probably the most recent really annoying one. It's because these games have no mechanics for stealth, so it all feels really arbitrary when something sees you or something gets messed up. It also makes you suspend disbelief even more than usual when the idiot guards just put you back in your cell which you subsequently walk out of and get caught again. Two of the characters in my party were immortal. Literally, they are immortal. I have been slicing things to death with swords. Let me kill everything.
FFVII's mini stealth section in the Shinra building was especially hilarious in that regard, since you're hiding behind statues to avoid being seen by the same shitty guards you had been beating on just to get there.
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Man I already forgot my other one.
I mean yea, I know you can shift the camera manually by clicking down on the right analog stick, but I generally don't do that. I'll click it to shift it over to Alan's right shoulder, and then just leave it alone. But after a couple of minutes of playing, I'll notice that it's gone over to the complete opposite side of the screen! It's frustrating as hell. I mean, there's no rhyme or reason to this phenomenon. I don't recall encountering the same camera issue in Max Payne 1 or 2. They were all fine, right? It's just that they programmed this new third person camera to move around, as if guided by an invisible ghost or something. It's disorienting as hell but not in any sort of good way. The thick dense fog shifting and enveloping the trees... that's all great stuff, keep it up Remedy. But I don't need an annoying camera that has a mind of its own. That's just detrimental to the overall gameplay experience. It's not appreciated. I don't need to suddenly have Alan Wake's character model shift over from one corner of my screen to the other.
Hahahah that's such a pet peeve of mine in that game :^:
I'm annoyed in any game that suddenly switches to a need to be unseen by the people you were just killing. Yet I've seen it at least half a dozen times over the years. It's icing on the cake when you're "punished" by having to battle the enemies in a simple battle - that you win - and then have to start over the section of the level again.
Not only CAN I kill those guys, I just KILLED those guys - why exactly do I have to start over? Haha.
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This maddening fad continues to the present day, just take a look at Modern Warfare 2. COD6 MW2's magazine rounds are just depicted as these tiny little pips. Why the hell would anyone want to count tiny little pips in a row on the bottom of your screen, which is semi-hidden against the terrain of the ground? Why not just use real fucking numbers? Instead of populating the lower right-hand corner of my screen with 30 tiny fucking bullets, why not just write a big 30 there? Which is, ya know, what FPSs used to do? Nobody needs to see all 20 or 30 or, the worst one of all... 200 fucking wide ass bullet symbols for your machine gun. Seriously, they actually go to the trouble of fitting in 200 really short, wide pips on the HUD for the machine gun ammo count. It's ludicrous. Thank god for Battlefield Bad Company 2's normal numbers. Three Zero. Or Two Zero Zero for MGs. That's all we need. Everyone playing your game can count numbers, we don't need bullet symbols.
Please, learn to write.
Try reading some actual books instead of sodding superhero comics or anime or whatever it is you're copying.
See, I'll play devil's advocate here and say that it's not the writing that I'm interested in, as far as 'gaming storytelling' is concerned: I'm much more interested on how interaction can be used in a narrative way.
I still don't think we've gotten there yet, but one of these years......
And something tells me Warren Spector will be the one to do it. That beautiful bastard :winky:
Problem with interaction is that it takes an immense amount of work to properly implement real Choice and Consequences. And since a lot of reviewers don't even bother to play all the way through the game, much less do so multiple times to observe reactivity, you're out a lot of dev time with only nerds on forums caring about it. Much better you have only 2 (and if you're really lucky, 3) choices which are pointed out in BIG BOLD exposition, that way, even if they don't choose it, the player knows that you did something. Even if that something has little to no actual effect. See: AP
I blame modern developer's and/or gamer's complete bibliophobia and insistence on voice acting for why we can't have nice things
Can't stand it!
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While some games don't really need all the extra buttons, people who argue that there's no difference in design paradigms between a PC only game or one that also has to fit within the confines of a controller are smoking something. Which is why DA2 might actually be not that bad, rather than reducing complexity to fit within the 4 triggers, facebuttons, and d-pad directions, or doing silly radial menu junk, they're just developing the 2 combat systems simultaneously but still somewhat segregated into paradigms that work better for the particular platforms
FUCK PHASE TICKS! I am fine with small hitbox enemies. Headcrabs can be some scary shit. I didn't mind the poppers in halo. But they were done right. There were only a few headcrabs at a time. no more then 5 maybe. And yes, there were a lot of popcorn flood, but they were easily killed.
Phase ticks are just dickhole enemies. Take the numbers of the popcorn flood, give them a headcrabs health, and make them EXPLODE if you come anywhere near them. Now make it so you can't jump over railings, and you're stuck in a sewer with them. You now have a reason why I'm not bothering with your stupid game anymore.
Also fuck sewer levels.
I guess basically, I am asking why are game engines not reused more? Maybe they are and I just don't notice, but I am certain Prime has not been. I think RE4 was reused in the wii Dead Rising, but that is not the way to do it...
This so much, in general. For some reason, everything has to be all "huge graphics!" "action packed gameplay!" "Stuff!". And it drives me nuts. I just want a goddamn 2D platformer, or a damn turn-based RPG! Am I asking for so much? Am I?! :x
It's the reason I love and dread the 3DS at the same time - the DS was like the last bastion of actual 2D games in the whole industry, and now with the new improved technology I can already smell the developers going with the same paradigm of the big consoles, "make it shinier, nobody will notice the game sucks!".
Somedays, I feel like a grognard... /sigh
I also hate games that treat the single player experience half-assed, or use it to promote the multiplayer. I remember Splinter Cell : Pandora Tomorrow being bad for this.
Red Dead Redemption - skinning animals. Okay, I get it. He's skinning the animal. That was a nice touch the first 5 or 6 times I saw it. But come on... Enough already! Just grab the shit and go. And besides, if you are going to make me watch the same animation over and over again, at least have the common sense to put the player camera back to it's original position when you are through. It was very disorienting to stop and skin a bear/rabbit/deer/etc. only to regain control after the carving animation facing a totally new direction. Then getting magically mauled by a random fucking cougar (but I'll leave that bitching to someone else, I had far less trouble in that regard than others).
Final Fantasy XIII - constant exaggeration of character emotion. I'm not new to the JRPG genre - I'm not a great big huge fan that plays everyone out there, but I play enough to know this type of stuff is commonplace. But for some reason, FF13 really grated on my nerves when characters' VAs would whimper, sigh, squeal, "huh?" and gasp unrealistically during the dialog. Vanille and Hope are probably the biggest offenders here - they are also two of my favorite characters - but every time they spoke they interjected almost every other word with these silly expressions that were over the top. It drove me fucking crazy.
Japan can't write and America can't draw*. Those DC cartoons and movies are like the ultimate pooling of strengths, taking Japanese animation studios and wrapping them in time-tested American IPs and talent produces wonderful, wonderful results. Shit, I need to watch Batman: Under the Red Hood.
*I'm being a generalizing dick. But Japan can't write more than America can't draw.
All Halo games have both.
Perfect Dark had numbers everywhere which was nice and an adapative ammo readout, but now that's considered not 'modern' for some reason:
http://www.therwp.com/files/game-images/2010-03-13-14h30m54s222.jpg
Also my biggest gaming pet peeve is pause menus that take like 3 seconds before they actually start recognizing that you want to go up/down for the menu items. Burnout 3 was really annoying for this.
That and the gummi ship shit from Kingdom Hearts.
3DS FC: 5343-7720-0490
Argh. This particular case was the most annoying example of developers treating you like an idiot. Especially since I wasn't going to leave until I found the nearby glyph, so I had to listen to that jackass scream at me over and over and over. At least I've had it drilled into my head how to say "Over here" in Italian.
...what?
because hxc games on the wii sell like 10k copies and lolwaggle shovels sell 16 billion copies.
I hate unskippable intro videos, sponsor videos, etc and unskippable tutorials. Especially when they still make you do the tutorial on New Game+ games.
Also, I hate how the legend of zelda games have the "olol u dumb, we'll give you CONSTANT hints at what to do, except the hints aren't hints, they are simply EXACTLY WHAT YOU NEED TO DO"
Just give me a jump distance based on how long I hold the button down.
Why because I live in the UK do I have to wait 3/5 days or weeks to get a game? At least you can make up some bullshit reasons for store releases but digital distribution?
Borderlands was a good example. 5 day delay in release yet I could preload it the same time as people in the US and it just sat on my hard drive doing nothing.
SSFIV's matchmaking that puts me, a total noob, up against someone with 4000 PP and his 10000 BP whoever. I don't mind getting beat down, I know I'm not the greatest, but if you're playing ranked battles at least try to keep it in the same ballpark, please.
This seems to be a specific problem for the genre. In most games, there's a difficulty curve, where things start out easy and get harder as you learn to play the game. Maybe it's their open-ended nature, but most tower defense games utterly fail at this. And not just in a "hey it gets hard too fast!" sort of way.
Take Savage Moon for example, a TD game for the PS3. It starts out fun enough, upgrading units and making barriers and making healing towers to heal them and whatnot. Then, in the space of a single level, if you're not putting exactly these towers in these spots at this time then you're going to lose, no question. It stops being a strategy game and becomes a guessing game where you have to figure out what the developers wants you to do through endless trial and error. The same thing happened in Defense Grid for the PC.
I don't mind hard games, or games with steep learning curves (hello Etrian Odyssey and Demon's Souls) but this is just ridiculous. The only recent TD game I can think of that avoids that is Plants vs. Zombies.
Zelda: Link finds mirror shield, master sword, dungeon item, boss that dies to dungeon item, boomerang,
slingshot, treasure chests with only bombs, arrows, rupees. Just once could I open up a chest and
find a .....a fucking cape for instance? Could I dual wield swords while wearing chain armor? People
will say "But Link doesn't wear chain armor." Well maybe he should dammit. Is the
next game going to take place in Hyrule again? Kakaraka village and the dumb as shit citizens who
have weird fetishes and talking babies. Ugh. CHANGE!!!
Mario: Same story, same game. I guess I can't get too mad at this one. Mario's hold up well, I guess I'm just tired of doing the same shit over and over. People will point to other games and all the sequels. To me, those games at least have a new story to uncover and play through, Mario doesn't.
Animal Crossing: This one pisses me off the most. Nintendo just said "Fuck you" to all the fans of this game by releasing the same shit in the next games. Anyone on this board could come up with a million awesome ideas for this game that could make it so unique and please the fans. Nintendo could give a shit. I'm not holding out much hope for the 3ds version being anything but the same game but with some 3d.
The ds: How many times can Nintendo release the same fucking thing? Ds, dslite, dslite s, ds large. I'm still using the fucking fat.
These are my opinions, I could be wrong.
If your game has any semblance of plot and cutscenes and doesn't have subtitles? Fuck you, Developer.
e: It's like "ride the controller like a horse to shoot behind you" instead of "hit B".
Oh, wait. No. Knuckles hit me and I lost all my Emeralds. Better go re-collect them over the next thousand games. Whee!
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Mario though is golden. They are pure gameplay wonders and if you for some reason actually give a shit why Peach is in trouble just play the Paper Mario or DS RPG games.
The last one I thought was just fantastic was Wind Waker, so I'm at least happy that I got to bow out of that series on a high note.