Game ideas that developers need to stop doing
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I'm REALLY sick of the whole "good/bad" choice thing. Deus Ex did it perfectly: There are three different endings. None of them are inherently good or bad, but all three will change the world in a profound way, and there is no "making things go back to normal" choice. (PRIMARY VICTIM: Star Wars: Jedi Academy)
First-person cutscenes. What Half-Life did perfectly was not that your eyes never leave your head, but that you never lose control of your character. Furthermore, people's eyes don't REALLY shake that much when their character just leans a little bit to the left. If your game's cutscenes are more easily presented with a third-person camera, go for it. (PRIMARY VICTIM: Clive Barker's Jericho, but it happens to a lesser extent in other games)
Silent protagonists. Gordon Freeman was silent because everything was your choice, and you're just playing as "you". And you're named Gordon Freeman. But a game like, say, Far Cry 2, involves some very direct choices. You pretty much HAVE to do missions for diabolical warlords in over to win over their good side, and that on its own says something about your character. Besides, he makes his own statements in the loading screens.
Hiring people off the street to do your voice acting. I think the big lapse here is that actors don't really get enough of a sense of what their character is like. Be sure that voice acting actually comes later, so they can see their semi-completed character, and animations of them doing stuff. Also, fire anyone who over-exaggerates their lines.
Putting us in a setting as a soldier. I don't mind it...but I hate it when it happens too often. Which it often does. It's hard to get any sense of humanity in a game when everyone you know is experienced in killing people. No one is innocent. (PRIMARY VICTIM: Call of Duty 4. I did not feel sorry for the nuke victims whatsoever, and I am not alone.)
First-person cutscenes. What Half-Life did perfectly was not that your eyes never leave your head, but that you never lose control of your character. Furthermore, people's eyes don't REALLY shake that much when their character just leans a little bit to the left. If your game's cutscenes are more easily presented with a third-person camera, go for it. (PRIMARY VICTIM: Clive Barker's Jericho, but it happens to a lesser extent in other games)
Silent protagonists. Gordon Freeman was silent because everything was your choice, and you're just playing as "you". And you're named Gordon Freeman. But a game like, say, Far Cry 2, involves some very direct choices. You pretty much HAVE to do missions for diabolical warlords in over to win over their good side, and that on its own says something about your character. Besides, he makes his own statements in the loading screens.
Hiring people off the street to do your voice acting. I think the big lapse here is that actors don't really get enough of a sense of what their character is like. Be sure that voice acting actually comes later, so they can see their semi-completed character, and animations of them doing stuff. Also, fire anyone who over-exaggerates their lines.
Putting us in a setting as a soldier. I don't mind it...but I hate it when it happens too often. Which it often does. It's hard to get any sense of humanity in a game when everyone you know is experienced in killing people. No one is innocent. (PRIMARY VICTIM: Call of Duty 4. I did not feel sorry for the nuke victims whatsoever, and I am not alone.)
No, he'd prefer cinematic cutscenes, but if anyone managed to put a turn-based cutscene into a game i'd gladly buy it.Axolotl said:
Selling games on gimicks - this mostly applies to FPS's but not exclusively, basically anything that market's itsself as "The same fun you used to have PLUS a chainsaw!!" (im loowing at you Gears)
Games giving away EVERYTHING on the plot, gameplay etc before you get to play it - Bring back surprise!
I'd like to say that was a great post and i agree wholeheartedly but ill reply to this bit. Im with you in the nuke victims thing but i dont think being a soldier has to reduce the humanity, its the fact that none of these soldiers seem to show remorce and none of the bad guys want to do anything but kill - bring on the game where each soldier cares for something (except the few badasses for the testosterone nuts to admire and everyone else to revere) and has a personality and you can leave people if you want, where they can retreat or surrender or just sit in a corner and cry and you dont just attatch c4 to various parts of his body and detonate them one by one.Katana314 said:
Yeah, just picture if, say, a next-gen River City Ransom managed to get even half of the budget of something like Age of Conan or World of Warcraft. Add next-gen cartoon graphics, sound quality, a massive world, even deeper gameplay and a strong online community... It would be glorious. I mean, RCR already has a really great character creation system from the GBA version.TsunamiWombat said:
Actually I have used the defend button occasionally, but only in those rare occasions where hitting the enemy physically causes them to counterattack with a powerful attack.Ravenbom said:
See Evrae's breath in FFX.
Of course that is also when everyone is fully healed and theres no protective or haste spells to be cast.
Sports games
You play one, you played all. Stop making the same shit every year! (you know what company I'm directing to)
You play one, you played all. Stop making the same shit every year! (you know what company I'm directing to)
CGI Trailers. Waste of time considering how much faster and cheaper it would be to show gameplay.
I counter with.Ravenbom said:
There is no reason to have real time battle systems, they just limit the amount of strategy you can include in the game and create lots of design constraints that you don't need. You can make some really interesting turn systems while real time is inevitably samey.
Now what i was originally going to post.
Humans, the ultimate cliche. If it doesn't take place on earth there is no valid reason to include the anthropomorphic chimps.
In my defense, his entire series of FFVIII scrutiny spans seven ten-minute-ish episodes, and it hasn't come close to the ending of the game, though I doubt he'll continue the series at this point. The way he portrayed the magic drawing really made his point convincing, and a beginner, like The Spoony One, probably would not have known about the alternative methods of obtaining magic until after they invested too much precious time into doing it the hard way. What's really funny is, despite how "awful" The Spoony One makes FFVIII out to be, I still want to give the game a shot. How's that for sucking up to Square?Flour said:Don't go and say X is bad because of one video
Yes! Hello, fellow Spoony fan. Yeah, I don't think all of his points are 100% valid either, but, like you said, it can still be really entertaining to watch.Altorin said:
Anyway, here's another idea game developers need to stop doing: pointless ports!
Now, to be fair, I actually enjoyed the port of Chrono Trigger on the PSone. It had added content like anime cutscenes and songs cut from the final soundtrack, it came packaged with Final Fantasy IV, and it gave people like me a chance to play a game that they probably would not have otherwise been able to play without the aid of an emulator or something. But this was an example of a port done right.
Port done wrong? Try the Wii re-release of Resident Evil 4. What is the point? Firstly, the Wii is backwards compatible, so what the heck is stopping you from just popping in the Gamecube version? Secondly, the game wasn't even two-and-a-half years old before it was ported; Chrono Trigger didn't get the aforementioned PS port until after almost six years. Thirdly, the game doesn't appear to offer anything new other than the control scheme. I looked on GameFAQs for something that would explain the differences between the Wii version and its predecessors, but other than the Wii version getting the same extras granted to the PS2 version, people were able to copy and paste their guides for the GC and PS2 versions of the game verbatim. Lastly, RE4 isn't really too hard to find anyway. Granted, Chrono Trigger isn't going for hundreds of dollars on ebay either, but how many people back when the PS port was released owned both a PSone and an SNES. Heck, I still have never owned an SNES (though it's on my to-do list).
My point: a game shouldn't be ported unless it is old, and even then it should either be bundled with other old games or packaged with a bunch of new content.
Goblins. I don't want to play another game with goblins in it. They are unchallenging, uninteresting and overused in RPGs. Boring. When you see them, it's like the developers popping in to say "hey, we've run out of ideas now, so we're going to fill this game with the most boring and cliched enemy we can find."
I could instantly tell Oblivion would be worse than Morrowind because Morrowind didn't have goblins, but Oblivion did.
Edit to add:
I played FF8 the whole way through, and yes it was shit and boring, and the magic and drawing system was a large part of the problem (also: characters, and plot). Basically, it works like this: you need to draw magic to junction it to an ability to increase it, and the more powerful the spell and the bigger your stockpile, the better the junction is at raising your stats. So you have to spend ages drawing 100 spells to get the best effect, which is boring. If you only grab a few of each spell, you will end up seriously underpowered.
Then, if you actually cast your best magic, you're also reducing the amout of magic you have junctioned and hurting your own stats, and then you'll have to go back to drawing more magic. Boring again.
So you end up only using physical attacks and limit breaks to avoid this, which is also boring. So it all sucks.
I could instantly tell Oblivion would be worse than Morrowind because Morrowind didn't have goblins, but Oblivion did.
Edit to add:
I played FF8 the whole way through, and yes it was shit and boring, and the magic and drawing system was a large part of the problem (also: characters, and plot). Basically, it works like this: you need to draw magic to junction it to an ability to increase it, and the more powerful the spell and the bigger your stockpile, the better the junction is at raising your stats. So you have to spend ages drawing 100 spells to get the best effect, which is boring. If you only grab a few of each spell, you will end up seriously underpowered.
Then, if you actually cast your best magic, you're also reducing the amout of magic you have junctioned and hurting your own stats, and then you'll have to go back to drawing more magic. Boring again.
So you end up only using physical attacks and limit breaks to avoid this, which is also boring. So it all sucks.
not games that are realistic,but games that try to be realistic its like a kid that does not know what he wants to be when he grows up and keeps switching between 2 things in this case gritty realism or cartoony fun
also the CHEARGE type of game dear god that is what almost game these days is based around (maybe a slight exaggeration)
also the CHEARGE type of game dear god that is what almost game these days is based around (maybe a slight exaggeration)
Like someone else said, a middle ground between ritualistic baby sacrifice and the 2nd coming of the Bambi/Christ hybrid, I'm looking Bioshock right in the eye, and no, though I do remember Yahtzee using it to make a point about the stupidity of Black/White morality in RPGs, I think of Bioshock, a game with an otherwise perfect story, as being dragged down by that.
Tolkien rip-off RPGs, I play D&D, one of the pioneers of Tolkien rip-offery, and I'm ok with that, but now, 40 years after his books came out, I get pissed when I see yet another ale-guzzling dwarf or tree-hugging elf, though, to be fair, games aren't the only medium that rips off Tolkien, I assume that I don't need to say any more about Christopher Paolini's little fantasy love-child series.
Tolkien rip-off RPGs, I play D&D, one of the pioneers of Tolkien rip-offery, and I'm ok with that, but now, 40 years after his books came out, I get pissed when I see yet another ale-guzzling dwarf or tree-hugging elf, though, to be fair, games aren't the only medium that rips off Tolkien, I assume that I don't need to say any more about Christopher Paolini's little fantasy love-child series.
It has been said before and I will repeat it: Escort Missions need to stop. Even the two words 'escort' and 'mission' put together in relation to a game make people cringe; everyone hates them. And who on this planet would rightly enjoy trudging slowly down a hallway while your whiny, weak, easily killed counterpart stands there getting their ass fed to them?
I'd like to see more strategy games in which the game makers figure out how to make the people you train/create/recruit (whatever the game calls it) act like they have half a brain. It drives me nuts how even in recent RTS games, you still have units who get stuck on objects or terrain or who get lost and don't go where you tell them to go. Or who blindly keep going to their destination even when they are being attacked by monsters or the enemy, instead of stopping and defending themselves or at least finding some cover. A little less effort on making RTS games 3-D graphics look cool and more effort into the AI would be nice.
