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C.H.U.D. - The Videogame (NSF56k), or Everybody Hates Halo
Ultimanecat
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
No, they aren't actually making a game about the horror classic. This is more of a rant thread about lack of ingenuity in enemy/level design.
It seems like a good deal of action games these days have at least one section or area where the enemies become mindless and the levels become drab, simplistic, and uninteresting (or, as is the new craze, simply dark as shit). My friends and I have come to call these enemies C.H.U.D.s (after the movie), and we abhor them. I may be alone, but I hate, hate, hate hate coming upon a sewer or a cave in a game, because I know I'm going to be forced to fight the same dull enemy over and over. And usually it's a spider, but with some Xtreme modification, like sword-legs or an upside-down head. Here are some examples:
The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay
Why go for the throat when I can go for the kidneys?
Most of the game involves poking people to death using nifty first-person hand-to-hand combat that really hasn't been matched to this day (except for maybe Condemned). Except for the two hours in the middle where you're slogging around the pitch black area called "The Pit" avoiding troglodytes because you don't have enough ammo and your context-sensitive melee moves don't work. Very unbecoming of Vin Diesel, since I heard on the internet that footage of his circumcision later went on to become the film Armageddon.
PsiOps: The Mindgate Conspiracy
What's a little surprise-sexing of the face between friends?
This game would be absolutely horrible if it weren't for the psychic powers gimmick that lets you fling men about, light them on fire, and/or commandeer their brains and force them to kneel down and put the barrel of their own gun into their mouth. I own this game, but I've never beaten it because the game designers decided that the last 20% of the game should just be you fighting psi-gametes (see above, I just made up the name because I don't know what they actually are) in an ancient tomb (which is actually just a cave). And since your psychic powers don't work on them, you just shoot them with your generic guns...which brings us full circle back to the first sentence of this paragraph. Way to go Midway!
(By the way, apparently the studio that developed this went on to develop Stranglehold. Probably for the best)
Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines
It's times like these that I'm glad I picked Toreador at the start. (Photo credits to Aistan from the LP:Bloodlines thread)
A great game that I got into thanks to this forum. Yet it still doesn't excuse the fact that this game - which is mostly about choosing how to get things done - forces you to go through monster-laden dungeons (especially the Sewers!) occasionally. Really blows when you are trying to run through as a non-combat character.
Halo 1/2/3/The Quest for More Money
The Flood feature the most advanced AI Bungie ever developed, known as "Real-time Ambling Towards the Player" and "Ignoring Grenades Like No Other Enemy in the Game Does"
Harping on Halo isn't always a great idea on these forums, but I'll go ahead and say that The Flood are a fine idea for the games' plot and a horrible idea for their gameplay. Halo made a name for itself with wide-open areas, vehicles, and combat against effective, organized enemies...except for the parts where none of that is true. And while it was a bit better in part 3, it's sad that it took that long for them to realize.
F.E.A.R.
No picture for this one. I liked this game quite a bit for its visceral gun combat and spooky environments. Unfortunately, the last few levels eschew all of that and turn into The Real Ghostbusters. Don't cross the beams, you jerks, because the gameplay simply gets stupid at the end. Maybe it got better in the expansions?
Far Cry
Get used to this visage; you'll be seeing it often in this game
This game was a big deal when it first came out, because its expansive environment and sophisticated enemy AI were supposed to change the way we play games...and then you get about halfway through and fight "mutants" that just run at you and hit you no matter what. Lucky for them, Crytek didn't fuck them over and made them ridiculously fast, instantly deadly, and placed many of your encounters with them indoors. While we're forgetting what makes our games fun, let's jury-rig Dr.Mario to the last half of Metal Gear Solid.
The latest screenshot from Grand Theft Auto 4
Honorable mention goes to Half Life 2, which actually did its standard "dark area with stupid enemies" section very well.
Anyways, why do game developers do this? To pad length? To provide variety? Why disregard the most compelling parts of the games we love and force us back to the days where we fought men with chainguns implanted in their chests for a level or two at a time?
Any other examples? Or am I alone in being sick of C.H.U.D.s?
SteamID : same as my PA forum name
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So you're definitely not alone there.
There really are few things quite as irritating as having all your cool powers taken away and being sent to play doom for an hour and a half to earn your gold star.
God damn I hated the flood. Sure they're easy enough to kill, but as a dedicated mouser I found them just about intolerable to play against with a controller. Oh good lord how I hated them.
The thing is, lazy design isn't a modern phenomena, and I don't think it's ever going to go away. I can only think of a few games that don't drag at certain points.
Curse you! Also, I think these levels may be an outlets for the devs sick, sick hated of people.
The Flood sucked, right from the start. They aren't even as smart as a Grunt, they have lots of health, and there's a ton of them. Basically, they replaced good enemies with really poorly designed ones. Doesn't make a lick of sense. It's what I like to call "artificial difficulty," instead of designing worthy opponents, they make really dumb ones with lots of health and big guns. The only reason they are hard to beat is because they are stupidly unbalanced.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.H.U.D.
Sometimes I Stream Games: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/italax-plays-video-games
Actually, I was going to include FarCry. But then I forgot because I got ahead of myself.
Besides, apparently Crytek figured out that if you're going to force the player to fight uninteresting enemies in their mercenary combat game, the rainforest needs to be frozen solid. That's the only way to do it right.
Really, whats a game without a frozen wasteland level?
I live in Canadia. Snow is not cool. Snow is piking cold.
Another one I think qualifies as being mentioned is The Darkness. Oh Man. I hate saying bad stuff about this game cause the immersion alone worth the price of the game but the........spoiler needed..
Seriously though, y'all should buy it anyway.
Also, Crimsonland, which is basically wall-to-wall CHUDs.
I guess it's true that simplifications of gameplay aren't always accompanied by situations like those I named above, however.
Seriously though. You can randomly select any FPS game and it will more than likely contain a sewer level. Sometimes I forgive this if the game gives me a convincing reason to be in the sewers. They mostly do not however.
The Flood? I like the Flood in concept, but in execution it leaves much to be desired. Especially when each of the Halo games has you fighting Covenant until about half-way then you get to fight the Flood through the rest of the game.
Most games do have these "C.H.U.D.s", but luckily its normally for like one level. For Halo its the last half of the game! Despite my gripes, I am still a whore for all things Halo.
Though they did kind of hint that it was coming through most of the game, with your attention being drawn to a vague shadow skipping across the screen in the distance.
For the most part though, I agree with you. I don't think it is just the mindlessness of certain enemy types that causes problems; it's that they just aren't fun to fight for a couple of reasons:
A) In general, they provide poor visual feedback when you score hits and do damage. Most enemies in Half-life 2 (particularly the Hunters), and Halo's brutes are my favourite examples, but Doom 3's zombies, Far Cry's Trigens, and so many others suffer from the same problem.
And I don't think it is necessarily an issue of padding. I think a lot of it is an attempt at atmosphere that just doesn't quite pan out, or an enemy design concept that never really worked in-game but had too many resources put into it to be cut by the end of a project.
jesus, jesus, jesus christ
1) Small groups of smart enemies
2) really small groups (ore singular) huge enemies that take ages to kill
3) hordes of stupid enemies
That part almost made me not want to finish the game.
I have never hated spiders so much as I did in that game. Those entire areas were exercises in anger management.
And antidote hoarding.
I fucking HATED the end game of Uncharted. It was complete bullshit.
I honestly don't remember what the story was, it was just a lot of fun.
Lets see if I can recall what the story was.
Aliens are trying to take over Earth with the aid of Mega-Corp Datadyne. You then travel to Area 51 in search of answers. Which leads you to blowing up Air Force One because it was in fact a plumb-bot that came to Earth to hunt down the Change-a-trons who have been hiding on Earth disguised as quality furniture to escape Plumb-bot oppression. Then everyone ends up blowing each other up with Nukes they got from the Brits in exchange for teeth to eat Corn on the Cob with.
Or something like that.
That's when you're assassinating the armchair ambassador, Steven
Haha, I thought I was the only one.
EDIT: I LOVED Riddick, so that section didn't bother me.
I also just remembered that the original Devil May Cry did this, as well. If you don't remember, it's because your mind won't let you.
Nope. I thought of it too.
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