PainInTheAssInternet said:
I have a feeling that this point might be rebuked because it's a feature of realism that adds tension. I'd reply that the game has mutants, zombies, giant flies and scorpions, Liam Neeson not *****-slapping the shit out of everyone with light sabres, etc. and games are meant to be fun. I just find weapon degradation annoying as it drains my resources and makes my weapons weaker than they should be really fast. I've never felt tension from this, just frustration.
The point isn't entirely realism.
For starters, the game's entire premise is survival, and degradation is a common feature in any game with survival as its premise. Granted, Fallout 3 isn't the greatest example of a survival game, but it's made very obvious throughout the story that the idea is the "war of survival".
Second, it adds more to the game's mechanics in multiple ways. For starters, it encourages more exploration to find weapons. It also requires that you make decisions about what to take and what not to take, but at the same time, getting rid of one weapon to help repair another weapon is a good way to lower what you're carrying when you find yourself going through a particularly long dungeon, but you do have to consider the loss of caps that results from using a weapon to repair. It also adds extra to the Skills and Perks, forcing the player to manage their points better around what they want to do. That's not even to talk about some of the economics involved.
Maybe you don't like the system, but having taken full advantage of it, I personally would have found the game much less enjoyable, especially on my playthroughs that were more about roleplaying a character rather than just having fun.
Anyways, as for my games:
L.A. Noire: Starting at Vice, the game has a nasty tendency of overloading you with a lot of street crimes within the first one or two missions before completely ignoring them. To make matters worse, these are generally found across the map from where the main mission is taking place. As a result, I often found myself driving across town to a street crime, finishing it, driving back to the main mission, and then getting a brand new street crime that I had to drive all the way back across town for. Yes, I know that there is the option to have you partner drive, but I seem to have some psychological disorder that prevents me from every wanting to use it no matter how bad the alternative is.
Mass Effect 2: You want to know what is really dumb? You pick your squad to be theoretically prepared for any situation. However, towards the end of the mission, you find an enemy that one of your squadmates is completely useless against and the other is near useless. I know this happened on Horizon if you have Jack in your squad against the "boss" of the mission. Essentially, it puts you into a situation you couldn't have possibly been prepared for.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time: That stupid auto-lock-on feature just wouldn't work, and its effects are only magnified by how horrible the camera was at times.
