Criticise your favourite games...

[Proverbial Jon]

Hello fellow Escapists!

It occured to me today that a lot of our gaming discussion usually revolves around how amazing (Game Name Here) is or alternatively how terrible (Game Name Here) is... and usually both points of view appear in the same threads as no one can agree!

So I present to you, a thread about playing down your favourite games! Take your most treasured, holy grail of a game and rip it apart. Find its faults if you can and tell the community that you still love this game even though it fails.

My personal picks would be:

Silent Hill 2
This possible contender for my favourite game EVER is actually quite easy to pick apart. The combat is wooden and incredibly awkward when you need to shoot things fast. The camera angles are badly designed (frankly it's better when they're fixed) and the voice acting/script is simply hilarious. It's only because it still reduces me to a blubbering wreck and has such a beautiful story that I still hold it in high regard.

Metal Gear Solid
Hmmm this is a tough one. I guess I'm going to go with the obvious, ridiculously over-long cutscenes, amazingly convoluted story that goes bonkers just when you think you actually understand what's going on. Oh and that stupid shape memory alloy key card part, grrr.

It's actually quite hard to be objective when you like the games so much...

 

[GiantRaven]

Alpha Protocol:
Needed a better soundtrack. Perhaps a few levels that were more open-ended as well but I didn't really mind the linearity of the levels.

 

[Drop_D-Bombshell]

Gears of War 2

The storyline was good and varied but the story skipped to random places with little significance to the plot. Similar to Yahtzee's review of Gears, going from underground to a collapsed city to a giant worm to an abandoned facility confused me highly and were brief. It felt like a lot was cut from the final game and we recieved the skeleton version.

 

[Sixcess]

DOOM
The level design doesn't really try to give the impression that these are distinctive locations. The bases on Mars, Earth, Hell itself - they're mostly all just death mazes with some slight variation in the textures used.

Um... that's honestly the worst thing I can say about DOOM.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Halo: Master Chief doesn't have much personality, the multiplayer is full of dicks (though no worse than CoD), the science is a little soft and there isn't anything particularly revolutionary about it.

Mass Effect: (first game) uncharted world side missions were all too similar, too many copy pasted underground bunkers, by the time you got past level 30 the amount of equipment you were constantly tripping over and having to manage got ridiculous, and the ending where dead Saren morphs into a robot just because of some neural implants Sovereign gave him made no sense.
(second game) a bit too cover based (although the mechanics worked better than many other examples), not much sense of progression for an RPG, a bit too many squad mates to know what to do with at times, selling story content as dlc.

Assassin's Creed: First game had too much repetition and not enough weapons/fighting moves (but they've sorted that out now), enemies were too easy in the second (but again, thats sorted now) main story in brotherhood a bit too short, multi-player in brotherhood takes ages to load games, Desmond is at best bland and at worst annoying, and even after three games we still know very little about the pieces of eden, who the hell these pre-human god type people are, what the impending apocalypse they are warning us about will be, and what is behind some of Desmond/Altair/Ezio's near super human abilities.

However, when compared to all the things I like, nay love, about these games, I could not give the tiniest shit.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

Gears of War 2

The storyline was good and varied but the story skipped to random places with little significance to the plot. Similar to Yahtzee's review of Gears, going from underground to a collapsed city to a giant worm to an abandoned facility confused me highly and were brief. It felt like a lot was cut from the final game and we recieved the skeleton version.

I agree completely. I remembered thinking back on Gears 2 after some time away from it and remembering parts of the storyline that I couldn't quite explain. So thinking that I had obviously missed out on something I played again and paid extra special attention... turns out there really were massive plot holes and lack of explainations. Sad really because otherwise it's a really great game.

 

[Armored Prayer]

Halo Reach

While it was nice to have a bunch of Spartans who talk and have actual faces, I fell Bungie missed a great opportunity to properly flesh them out. Nobel team were likable but they lack real emotion for the viewers to care about. Jorge is a possible exception, but unfortunately it wasn't enough.

Oh, and the most downloaded/recommended pictures are pretty immature.

 

[Cybele]

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
The story was amazing and the acrobatics were tons of fun but my god did the combat get boring fast. One might also complain that the game was too linear but it never bothered me.

 

[bombadilillo]

Portal 2, all non test chamber puzzles seemed to degrade to where you could actually use the a portal. Looking forward to co-op is psn ever exists again

 

[nukethetuna]

Chrono Trigger/Cross
A silent protagonist never works for me, especially in an RPG. It becomes especially grating when you're at a scene where everyone is declaring their intent to save the world, and Crono/Serge just says nothing.

Alundra
Some of the platforming sections were difficult solely because they were north to south or south to north, in which case the camera gave you almost no indication of how elevated they were.

Final Fantasy Tactics
Despite the vast array of jobs and abilities, a huge amount of them were simply useless, and there were some really overpowered ones as well. Orlandu.

Tales of Eternia
The voice acting.

 

[HerbertTheHamster]

UFO: Enemy Unknown is way too easy, even with superhuman fixed.

 

[bombadilillo]

MSG4: Otocons "beard" talk about immersion breaking.

 

[DrOswald]

Here are some of my faves and some of their glaring flaws:

Planescape Torment: Whoever put gave a text-based game tiny text boxes should be slapped.

Otogi 2: Mostly a mindless beat-em-up.

Mass Effect 2: Basically condones fraternization, which when you think about the real-world implications, is pretty fucked up.

Smash Bros: Watered-down fighting game.

Portal: short.

Haha awesome idea for a thread!

I disagree with the Smash Bros. being watered down. Well, I have to admit brawl was but melee is for me the perfect example of what a fighting game should be. Controlling your character is fairly simple, all the moves are simple and easy to use, but learning to control that character well is where all the depth is. Simple enough for a small child, but some of the crazy stuff veteran gamers can do is mind blowing.

Most fighting games requires players to memorize and practice dozens of complicated button sequences use the competitive moves, not to mention studying complex damage charts and combo systems. This is monotony, not depth. Depth is not achieved by complexity, depth is achieved by solid core mechanics.

That is not to say Smash Bros. Melee is perfect. There are only a few really good levels in the game, The character imbalance is a bit ridiculous (especially if you turn off items,) and the single player is poor at best. And none of the Smash Bros have yet included Geno as a playable character.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

Portal 2, all non test chamber puzzles seemed to degrade to where you could actually use the a portal. Looking forward to co-op is psn ever exists again

I too am looking forward to Co-op, although I'm going to do it the old fashioned way and get a friend round to play on the same console. Take that PSN!

I also found the areas between test chambers a little simplified. It was amazing when you step into these huge environments and it looked as if some amazingly complicated arrangement of portals would be needed... nope, just shoot a portal and walk to the next area. Sadly lacking.

 

[bombadilillo]

Yeah well im looking to play with a friend across the country, I would prefer to be in same room, especially with this type of game.

Portal 1 when you excaped there was a real sense of "I am not supposed to be here" you just snuck behind the scenes artistic style. Portal 2 felt like I was going along exactly as I was supposed to.

 

[Euhan01]

Portal - Too short.

Obliveon - The talking.

Mass Effect 1/2 - Squad Ai needs improving.

Banjo Kazooie - Nuts and Bolts. - More variety in mission, lose the timer on each mission.

Age of Mythology - Too low population cap.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

Valkyria Chronicles, the fact that if a character is ducking behind something as stupid, the fact that characters could only take cover behind sand bags and only a few other trench areas was lame. And at times the game was weak in that anime way.

Also, what's with the enemy being able to shoot at you during your own turn? If all the characters are able to just randomly shoot, what is the point in employing a turn based system? The entire combat thing was interesting but it just kind of felt like it didn't really know what genre to be. I'm also going to take this opportunity to moan about the stupid book where you have to select the "next chapter" every level, damn that really breaks the immersion!