Developers you both love and hate

[ninjawpenguin]

I'm gonna have to go with the Bioware theme that seems to be emerging. I love their games, and I love the freedom they offer, but all of them just seem to be missing something.

And DA2 just pissed me off with the dungeon swap stuff. Would it have killed you to add in a few different dungeons? I would have waited the few extra months, I promise.

 

[EllEzDee]

Valve.
They make some great games, but their choices over the past 2 years have lead me to believe Gabe has suffered some kind of internal hemorrhaging.
They can either earn back some of the lost trust with a fantastic Portal 2, or, if it sucks, they can find someone else to milk money out of.

 

[mireko]

The whole interview. [http://www.gamespot.com/features/6305575/index.html]
And the reaction on the forum. [http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/141/index/6752788/1]
EDIT: Just want to clear something up. I am not trolling. I don't hate Bioware. I know I've been coming off as super negative recently. I loved DA:O. I've beaten it 5 times. I'm just extremely disappointed in the sequel.

Oh. I didn't realize he'd gone into quite so much detail.

We wanted to make RPGs, especially fantasy RPGs, accessible, cool, and interesting to people who have been playing RPGs for the last seven years and not realizing that every time they ate food or went for a long run in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, they were essentially grinding constitution.

That's... ominous.

I can understand being disappointed in the sequel, although the only thing I really *hated* was going to the same dungeon over and over again. The plot is still better (in my ever-humble opinion), even if it is irritating to go through the same corridors and fight the same shadows to finish more requests for Elizabeth [small]dark hour, kirijo group, tartarus, ryoji is bad, shut up junpei, persona 3 references.[/small]

 

[AnimatedAmbiguity]

The only one that comes to mind is EA. They have rather superb repertoire of titles, but the company itself still leaves a lot to be desired. (I.E. Juvenile marketing techniques and insanely shoddy DLC, to name but a few things.)

 

[mireko]

Anyway, Game Republic.

Hey, it's the company that made Folklore! Let's see what their next project is.. oh, it's a Clash of the Titans tie-in game.. well, that can't be good. What's next? Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom? They're doing the same thing Team ICO is doing? I don't see that ending well.. so what now? Knights Contract? Is it any-JUST MAKE SOMETHING AS GOOD AS FOLKLORE AGAIN, YOU PRICKS.

CyberConnect2

.hack was cool, I'm sure you have loads of other exciting projects lined up, right?

Wait, no, just Naruto games, my own fault for getting interested, I guess.

 

[Wolfenbarg]

Obsidian may just have the greatest writers in the business. Knights of the Old Republic 2 proved that they were more than capable of taking the story conventions of an established franchise and turn them on their head in a smart and thought provoking way. It's just too bad that they couldn't program their way out of a bag. They could probably manage to crash Minecraft without even dipping into the code.

Relic is another one that I can't help but love and hate at the same time. Not because they make bad games, but because they still haven't made Homeworld 3, even though their parent company bought the license back. With limited resources they could make one of the most gorgeous tactical RTS experiences we've ever seen, but no, they won't. Homeworld 2 didn't have a story worthy of the franchise, and I need closure!

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

snip

Different opinions. That is one of the reasons I liked P4 more than P3. It felt like you were running through the same dungeon for 250+ floors. Tartarus runs got boring. At least they tried to make the dungeons have more variation in 4. It will be fun to watch when Laidlaw starts bashing DA2 when DA3 is about to come out. Ah, the circle of life in the PR department.

 

[mireko]

snip

Different opinions. That is one of the reasons I liked P4 more than P3. It felt like you were running through the same dungeon for 250+ floors. Tartarus runs got boring. At least they tried to make the dungeons have more variation in 4. It will be fun to watch when Laidlaw starts bashing DA2 when DA3 is about to come out. Ah, the circle of life in the PR department.

Yeah, I agree. Well, there was that and some of the really silly parts of P3: Strega, the absurdly powerful Kirijo group and its robots (I loved Aigis, but she didn't do wonders for my suspension of disbelief), SEES and so on.

I think the Persona series is a good example of scaling down a plot to a more personal level. In P3 it was always very clear that you were fighting to save all the victims of the Apathy Syndrome, as well as the entire world (that's never a spoiler). In P4, while you do save the world eventually, it's mostly about saving your friends and whoever else gets dragged into the Midnight Channel.

DA2 wasn't as successful as that (kind of a tough act to follow), but I still think scaling the plot down was an effective way to investigate smaller aspects of the setting (parallel to examining each individual character's psychology in P4). Still, different opinions, yes.

It's nearly impossible to tell who is involved in what with BioWare's games now. Dragon Age, Mass Effect and The Old Republic are all being worked on by different departments, and that can't do wonders for the integrity of their games. However selfish it may sound, on some level I hope TOR fails so they can get back to making stuff I care about.

[sub]I wonder if the fans will follow his lead and argue that DA2 was TOTALLY BALDUR'S GATE AND THIS NEW ONE IS HALO EFFECT: EMPIRE.[/sub]

 

[mikev7.0]

Capcom.
They make some really, really good games, but they always manage to make one mistake that screws everything up.

Street Fighter IV- Seth
Marvel Vs. Capcom 3- Sentinel
Bionic Commando- Those Biomech things.

Just to name a few. I know all of these can be overcome by not sucking at the game, but they ruin this unskilled customer's fun, so I hate them for it.

Oh, and the whole DLC thing. If their games weren't so good to start with, I'd stop being suckered into buying overpriced expansions for them.
Seriously, 800 Microsoft points for two MvC3 characters? Jill and Shuma-Gorath aren't even that fun to play as!

Y'know I was just going to jump on the "EA is no longer what it was and now that it's wearing it's Pimp hat WAY too close to the Bioware offices my inner child feels threatened." band wagon but you had to pay 10 bucks for two characters and one of them was Shuma Gorrath??

...

You win. Capcom. I love em' but yeah Seth was....was....(god sometimes I wish I could use the word "cheap")....hard....TOO hard. An' I've never liked Sentinels, and now I fear running into the Biomechs in a game that I just got and HAD anticipated would be a lot of fun *grumble* Actually it IS a lot of fun and I'll probably enjoy the Biomech fights but another thing you reminded me of is how they ripped Survival out of Super Street Fighter IV and that's how I used to have fun practicing! Then there's Resident Evil 5 to consider and I still kinda' blame them for the poor ability to count to three amongst children who were fighting game fans when they were growing up. Inexcusable. On the up side tho' they do have quite an impressive understanding of synonyms... Thank god I dodged the Steel Battalion bullet...this could have gone on for pages.

Yet Shuma Gorrath? Ten Bucks? REALLY?? Wait you didn't actually PAY that did you??

 

[kortin]

Bethesda for fucking up Fallout 3/Oblivion so much, but making Morrowind such a good game.

Valve for making amazing games but taking too long.

Hm. I always thought morrowind was shit and Oblivion was amazing. I can't tell you how many times I threw the xbox controller on the ground because I couldn't fucking hit the damn monster/person/animal. I can't say anything about the storyline because I spent so much time going "oh, people like morrowind, i think i'll play that." then after fighting the first monster i remember how much the game pissed me off then quit.

Valve: PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, ANNOUNCE EPISODE 3! I'M DYING!!

Nintendo: I have always loved your games nintendo...but, you really need to come up with better games. I didn't even bother trying out The Other M. Come up with new characters and new worlds! You've done it before! Oh wait. Thats taking a risk. Can't risk trying out something new. Nope.

Treyarch: Alright, so really, i have little love for this company. Amazing campaign, terrible everything else. Reused zombie mode (although the masses were screaming for it, guess I can't complain when im the minority eh?) and guns that all shoot the exact same. They balanced the shit out of guns. And the fun.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

However selfish it may sound, on some level I hope TOR fails so they can get back to making stuff I care about.

I do too, but there is one problem. The amount of money invested in it is staggering. If TOR fails then Bioware might follow. Which is why I'm torn on the issue. I see where you are coming from on the last comment, but I think revisonism wasn't a problem with Origins. I never had a computer growing up so I couldn't play the earlier, awesome RPGs of the time. (I plan on remedying this over summer break with GoG.com)

I agree with you in terms of Mass Effect. ME2 comes out, suddenly, ME is this amazingly deep RPG. The truth was that ME was barely a RPG in the first place. ME2 just dropped all pretenses and made it a shooter. Which worked then, but Mass Effecting a set-in-stone fantasy RPG just isn't going to sit well with a lot of fans.

 

[mikev7.0]

Like many here it has to be Square Enix for me.

Its like they've lost all their passion and common sense.

In my eyes Lost Odyssey was more of a Final Fantasy XIII then the actual XIII was!!

Its all gone downhill since Final Fantasy 10 was released, (the last good main Final Fantasy game in my opinion!).

Its such a shame, because there have been quite a few diamonds with all the extra rough they have been releasing lately.

The World Ends With You was a fantastic game!

But for every good game they make, there's about 3 or 4 bad ones!

For their own sakes they need to throw out all the stuff they have been doing lately, and go back to those old classics, analyse them, and actually PLAY them.
They have no excuses on that front considering all the ports they have done!

If they can pick apart what mades those games good, and EXPAND on them, (rather than just copy it!), then the quality should improve!

Note to self: Pick up a copy of Lost Odyssey, STAT. Also I've heard a lot of escapists mention Square Enix but why no mention of Infinite Undiscovery or Star Ocean? I think those games are great. Is it that it's not Final Fantasy? (A game I couldn't get into since I never seemed to have the right system.)

 

[Beautiful End]

Should I even join the Square-Enix group? Half of the people have already pointed this out, but here it goes again. Instead, I'll focus on Squaresoft only. I never really fancied Enix or whatever their name was before the merge.

I love Squaresoft because:
-They provide me with Final Fantasy; the games that have a beautiful plot and graphics according to me.
-They gave me Kingdom Hearts which has a great plot but not as serious as FF (I don't really care about the Disney cameos.
-They come up with beautiful soundtracks.
-The games have well thought of settings.
-The characters are original in their own way (Not to be confused with cliched. Yes, there's a difference).

I hate Squaresoft because:
-I miss the overwhelmingly good FF games from yesteryear. You know, the ones with the great plot that made me feel like I was part of the story. For me, that'd be FFVIII and FFIX.
-I applaud them for wanting to try new things but I also hate them for that.
?FFXII was confusing in the sense that you had no idea who the protagonist was. At first, I thought this was innovative but then it just plain annoyed me.
?Getting rid of the main romantic plot was also a horrible idea as I figured out once I finished FFXII. I got used to them so why are you snatching them away from me now?
?It seems in an attempt to come up with non-cliched (?) characters, they're trying to come up with mild character personalities. That is, characters have a personality that border between boring/bland and different. They don't want to cross the line because then you get characters like Yuffie or Riku or Quina. But then don't wanna make them ordinary looking. The thing is, though, that annoying characters are still memorable. Now, does anyone remember who Basch is? Sadly, no. To me, Basch was a great character that had much more to offer but never quite got there.
-I'm tired of this company trying to "fit in" in today's society by making their games more action based and flashier than usual. Screw what the new kids want. If they want something like Gears of War or Halo or whatever, they can go play it. You don't have to make FF look like that; it just doesn't work! (-coughFFXIIIcough-)
-Square-Enix needs to stop trolling us with the idea of new games coming out...in about 10 years! There's FF XIII Versus (Or Crystal or whatever), Kingdom hearts 3, Kingdom hearts Deep Drop...whatever and so on. Was it really necessary to get a FFXIII sequel one year after its release? What about FF Versus? it's been on development for ages now.

And most importantly...what's with releasing sequels and prequels for different handheld systems?! Do they think we're all sitting on top of a gold mountain or what? I'm referring specifically about Kingdom Hearts; Crisis Core and FFIV and below for the DS are still a pretty low blow, though. In order to own all the KH games out there therefore, understand the plot, I would have to own a:
-PS2
-GBA
-PSP
-DS
-A japanese phone?
-A 3DS (Because 3DS are not backwards compatible)
-Possibly a PS3 if KH3 ever comes out.
Actually, for all we know, KH3 might be released for the Wii. Disney seems quite fond of it and Square Enix sure likes to troll people. So who knows?
I'm still a big fan and yes, I like the overly exaggerated characters and the great graphics, music and awesome plots. But it hurts to see them dig their own grave. And at the same time, it's their own fault.


As a side note, I also hate developers who deliver a great saga, then decide they don't want it anymore and sell it to someone else who tries to revive it/keep at it but it ends up being nothing like the original games. I'm mostly thinking about Naughty Dog and games like Crash and Jak and Daxter. I don't know if it was because I was younger or what, but the first Crash games were awfully fun. Then a new developer got the franchise and started to literally milk the series and then it sucked badly. Same with Jak and Daxter. The first 3 games were fun. Daxter was alright. Jak X was a fun, fresh spin-off, if you will. But then we got the Lost Frontier and it just made me wanna punch the screen. The game felt nothing like a Jak game. The only way I could tell I was playing a Jak game was because Jak was there...but that's all.
So a piece of advice: If you have a good franchise, have the dignity to let it die peacefully. Don't sell it off, don't try to revive it. Let it remain as a good memory in people's minds. Because as much as I liked The Legend of Dragoon, I'm glad I haven't see a sequel...

 

[Nouw]

Blizzard.

Make.original.fucking.games.please.
[sub]TropeCraft2:Tropes of Tropes[/sub]

They however can make pretty damn good games.

 

[The Apothecarry]

Bungie. Halo is one of the best shooter I've ever played, but there's two complaints:

REACH Y U NO HAZ SMGS?
NOBLE SIX Y U NO DUAL-WIELD?