ZylonBane on 10/8/2007 at 21:15
Anyone who stands in the same room for eternity fighting enemies, when he has clearly-defined objectives that he should be doing instead, is a bit of a dumbass, don't you think?
The correct complaint in this situation would be: Badly-implemented respawning is bad. Respawning is a tool-- and like all tools, it's up to the developer to use properly. This particular tool has been with us since Pac-Man. Sometimes it's used well (System Shock 2), and sometimes it's used horribly (NOLF2).
Sulphur on 10/8/2007 at 21:21
Completely obtuse puzzles, which don't clue you in with sufficient feedback as to whether you're heading in the right direction with a possible solution, or not at all. Mostly, it's titles within the adventure game genre that have problems with this, which is kinda ironic.
Instant death syndrome: traps and other things that are difficult to avoid without foreknowledge of them - which you gain, mostly, by dying from them the first time around.
Artificial Restrictions - Picking up a weapon like a two-handed sword or a rocket launcher (hello SS2, once more!) in a game and then being told that 'you don't have sufficient skills' to use it because you don't have enough experience points/modules/whatever. (Are these player avatars morons? I can imagine them going, "Gee whiz, I didn't know you could pull the trigger on this plasma doohickey to fire it! I'm glad I spent the last sixteen hours bashing people's heads in to magically find that out!")
Idiotic Control Schemes - mostly reserved for console ports. Anybody ever played MGS2 on the PC? [SPOILER] You spend most of the game getting a grip on its keyboard-spanning controls, and finally get aiming down pat only to find you can't win the last battle.
Why? Because the final boss can only be defeated with a katana - er, RF Blade. However, you've never used that weapon until now, because when you got it, you found that the game maps control for the katana to FOUR DIFFERENT KEYS you've never had to use before.
Imagine running around with WASD and swinging the sword left/right/up/down with UJHK or some equivalent while getting burned and choked on a roof-top, and you'll see what I mean.[/SPOILER]
Freddo on 10/8/2007 at 21:39
Quote Posted by henke
Escort missions.
They all seem to rely on you having to play em over and over again to see where the badguys will come from and taking them out before they get to the NPC you're supposed to protect.
Aye, hate those. Especially when the NPC person got stupid AI. Like barely got any health left and yet decides to blast his way thru everything and obviously dies so the big "game over" screen appears.
37637598 on 10/8/2007 at 21:46
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Considering that the average combat lifespan of an AI in an FPS is about 5 seconds, more authentic damage modeling would be complete waste of development resources.
Do you perhaps have any intelligent comments to make?
How about ; they only have to write the SIMPLE code once and then apply it to ALL of the enemies. I too hate hit points. They take out the fun of torture!
june gloom on 10/8/2007 at 22:38
Quote Posted by Sulphur
complaint about console game controls on PC
oh god. don't get me started. i mentioned it in another thread, but tomb raider anniversary is a very good example of this. okay check it: i've got the rope hooked up, and i'm running back and forth on the wall. the camera, for some godforsaken reason, seems to have gotten stuck on facing parallel to the wall, rather than perpendicular (facing the wall.) so i have to use W and S to go back and forth on the wall, rather than A and D. i want to jump AWAY from the wall to grab onto a ledge. now, common sense dictates, in a scenario like this, that when i reach the point i want to jump from, i would hit D as the wall is on the camera's left side.
wrong.
as soon as i hit the jump key, the game suddenly decides the controls for wallrunning no longer apply and switch them around, and D now jumps along the wall, often to lara's bone-shattering death, rather than away from the wall to the safety of the ledge.
the worst part is, this happens at random, so i'm left to keep trying over and over and hope it works eventually.
actually this leads me into another game mechanic i hate: randomization where it's not actually necessary. there's a lot of randomized things going on in TRA when it comes to making jumps that piss me off. for example, randomly when you jump onto a column, lara will lose her balance and you need to pound the use key to recover. that's fine, but now try jumping onto a column that is between two big stone walls that slam together every few seconds, and you can't stay on there for more than a millisecond because as soon as you land those walls are gonna be closing. now watch lara land on it and lose her balance, thus costing you that millisecond you needed to jump away. splat.
did i mention i really hated egypt at times?
there's a jump in greece where success seems to be random, as well. in the cistern, there's a ledge that you can't grab on to so you must traverse the gap in its entirety. almost impossible, though, because the distances of lara's jumps are slightly random, and she rarely seems to go far enough to make that jump. i spent two hours on that jump alone. i was ready to scream.
don't get me wrong, i love the game. but the controls and randomization are absolute horseshit.
Harvester on 10/8/2007 at 23:24
Quote Posted by Malf
Quicksave in otherwise difficult games.
Far too easy to abuse.
While I agree that not allowing quicksaves makes the game much more suspenseful, my gaming time is limited these days, I don't want to have to replay every section 5 times until I get it right (I'm looking at you, Far Cry!). With the limited time I have, I'd rather play 5 games where I have to do everything just once or twice, than 1 game where I have to do everything 5 times because I'm not allowed to quicksave.
michaelg on 11/8/2007 at 02:22
Boss fights.
I think this is the most moronic thing you can put in a game. It's a cheap tactic to make the game seem more difficult. To me there is nothing more frustrating than playing the same fight over and over.
june gloom on 11/8/2007 at 02:24
boss fights, when implimented well, can be quite enjoyable.
see: super metroid.
when implimented poorly, can be a fucking pain in the ass.
see: metroid prime 2.
Henri The Hammer on 11/8/2007 at 02:30
Quote Posted by ZylonBane
Considering that the average combat lifespan of an AI in an FPS is about 5 seconds, more authentic damage modeling would be complete waste of development resources.
Do you perhaps have any intelligent comments to make?
That's why I don't like FPS-games. They are not realistic, and never will be, since only thing their developers (and most players) care about is the graphics, ragdoll and making it "like a movie" (None of the FPS's I've ever played has felt like a movie, only game that ever has is Fahrenheit aka Indigo Prophecy). And of course that the players can kill everything as fast and as easy as possible. Why are all games about killing everything? Can't they think of anything else? *sigh* Makes me lose all hope in the future of gaming. Oh well, at least there is Thief and it's FMs.
NamelessPlayer on 11/8/2007 at 02:30
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Completely obtuse puzzles, which don't clue you in with sufficient feedback as to whether you're heading in the right direction with a possible solution, or not at all. Mostly, it's titles within the adventure game genre that have problems with this, which is kinda ironic.
Like the ones where if you don't do something very early in the game, like throw something at a cat chasing a rodent, you end up dying later with no way to finish other than STARTING AT THE VERY BEGINNING AGAIN AND MAKING SURE TO DO THAT ARBITRARY THING THIS TIME AROUND? ((
http://www.richardcobbett.co.uk/codex/articlelibrary/filingcabinet/the_50_weirdest_moments_in_pc_gaming/) See "Puzzles From Hell" entries in this list.)
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Instant death syndrome: traps and other things that are difficult to avoid without foreknowledge of them - which you gain, mostly, by dying from them the first time around.
(
http://www.richardcobbett.co.uk/codex/articlelibrary/filingcabinet/sierra_sudden_death_syndrome/) Hello, Sierra adventure games!
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Artificial Restrictions - Picking up a weapon like a two-handed sword or a rocket launcher (hello SS2, once more!) in a game and then being told that 'you don't have sufficient skills' to use it because you don't have enough experience points/modules/whatever. (Are these player avatars morons? I can imagine them going, "Gee whiz, I didn't know you could pull the trigger on this plasma doohickey to fire it! I'm glad I spent the last sixteen hours bashing people's heads in to magically find that out!")
How could I overlook that? I always hated those "your character cannot use a simple weapon just because your stats are not high enough" moments. I can understand the Exotic weaponry, but why the hell did I need to dump all those cyber-modules into raising Standard Weapons to 6 just to use an assault rifle? At least in Deus Ex, if you're not skilled in a particular weapon, you can at least USE it, though with limited effectiveness. (Now that I think about it, I really, REALLY hope Bioshock doesn't have that issue with weapons and skills...)
Quote Posted by Sulphur
Idiotic Control Schemes - mostly reserved for console ports. Anybody ever played MGS2 on the PC?
Do you know if the PC MGS2 port supports gamepads? I have a Xbox 360 pad that's really nice to use for these sort of console ports where absolutely no thought was given to a proper control scheme. (For instance, you apparently can't use a gamepad in the PC version of Beyond Good and Evil without resorting to KB+M emulation? WTF? And WHAT WERE THEY THINKING in not having mouse support out of the box for the PC version of Resident Evil 4? Ugh! Good thing the latter has a Wii version with controls that are at least tolerable over the dual-analog gamepad versions. As for MGS2 and BG&E, I can just go for the Xbox versions...)
