Games that you felt were ruined by one game mechanic

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richd213

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Mar 2, 2011
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Hey y'all, I'm new to the forums (have been watching the videos for a while though) so excuse me if this topic has come up before now.

Which games did you think were ruined by one game mechanic in them? For me, Bioshock's atmosphere was ruined by there being little penalty for dying; it just made all the tension go when you could just keep running out and bashing an enemy with the wrench.
 

danintexas

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Jul 30, 2010
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For me it was Bioshock and the hacking mini game

Oblivion and the unlocking mini game

Alpha Protocol and the hacking mini game


See a pattern?
 

DeadFOAM

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Aug 7, 2010
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danintexas said:
Oblivion and the unlocking mini game
I got much too good at that. Security was the first skill I maxed out. Even easier after getting the skeleton key.

OT: I don't know whether to call it a mechanic or not, but all the freaking driving in Farcry 2. Yes, the map is huge. Yes, its a pretty landscape. Yes, fast transit does "technically" exist but it rarely takes you near where you want to go. As much as I love the game, I got so tired of driving through respawning checkpoints with AI that can spot you from a far distance.
 

CowsMoo

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Jan 14, 2010
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Hijacking in Just Cause 2 bugged the piss out of me, and I generally love QTEs.

Also, it's not really a mechanic, but vignetting looks absolutely retarded in every game ever made, it seriously ruined ME2 and Bad Company 2 for me.
 
Jan 27, 2011
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Oh I have one.

Rune Factory Frontier. THE perfect Harvest moon game. I fell in love with it. And then...IT WAS RUINED BY THE STUPID RUNEY SYSTEM.

See, in harvest moon type games, you are trying to cram in as much as possible into each day, and RFF had tons to do (grow crops, meet townspeople, forge stuff, and clear dungeons). And then they throw in this stupid mechanic where you need to babysit the population of little magical sprites and keep their food chain going, or your farm will DIE. This was bad for several reasons.

1) We already had enough to do, this is one MORE task to do, and it's pretty much mandatory. And it's BORING.

2) It takes too long. You need to run to the clock tower to use the runey map (ONLY available there, or if you find the runey girl around town), take notes on what the populations in each area are, decide how many you need to remove/add from each place, then go and do it.

3) The tool you need to use sucks. It's this crappy little vacuum that only sucks up runeys near you, including ones you might not want to suck up (like, say you want to only remove gras runeys from an area. You'll probably pick up a few other ones instead). That and the animation is too slow and long, wasting even more time.


So that wastes a good chunk of time that I would rather spend on slaying monsters or wooing village girls! It ruined an otherwise perfect game for me. :(
 

bjj hero

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Feb 4, 2009
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The blimp cam in HAWX. I was really excited for this game until I played the demo and found out that you could not play the game in cockpit view as to do any of the much needed more acrobatic tricks were only available through go awful blimp cam.

I never bought the game.
 

Quinadin

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Oct 8, 2009
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Dead Rising and that dumb camera. If I remember correctly it messes with the LS and RS when you use it so it becomes incredibly hard to use. I returned the game solely on this feature.
 

kebab4you

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Jan 3, 2010
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Dragon Age, my god, you could not have picked worst controls scheme and way to do combat for me!
 

northeast rower

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CowsMoo said:
Hijacking in Just Cause 2 bugged the piss out of me, and I generally love QTEs.

Also, it's not really a mechanic, but vignetting looks absolutely retarded in every game ever made, it seriously ruined ME2 and Bad Company 2 for me.
You can turn off the film grain in ME2...

OT: Not ruined, but sullied by, for all of these-

Deus Ex and having the crossbow take about half a minute to knock someone out, giving it no value as a nonlethal stealth weapon as an enemy could easily trigger an alarm.

Mass Effect 2's combat "streamlining".

Forza 3's easily offended community and ban-happy moderation.
 

mireko

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Sep 23, 2010
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The time limit in the Dead Rising games.

I don't want to get a bad ending just because I spend all my time exterminating the zombie infestation.
 

Durxom

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May 12, 2009
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aegix drakan said:
You probably aren't going to get anyone else on this, but I'm going to have to agree with you there.

I really REALLY liked Rune Factory Frontier. There was tons to do, there was all the festivals, the beach season, farming, upgrading your house, dungeons, unlocking new dungeons, a main story line, lots of bachelorettes to choose from. It was a pretty dang good Harvest Moon game.

Then, they added in that tedious runey part like you said...why did they have to add that?... =S
 

Broken Orange

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Apr 14, 2009
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CleverNickname said:
Mining in Mass Effect 2

I fully expect ME3's minigame to be Excel sheets.
I can forgive Bioware for taking away the planetary exploration. I loved how streamlined (not dumb downed) they made the combat.

But that gosh darn mining minigame was the worst feature they added to the game.
 

Jamboxdotcom

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CleverNickname said:
Mining in Mass Effect 2

I fully expect ME3's minigame to be Excel sheets.
hey, some of us would like that! it would bring back memories of WoW before they dumbed it down. speaking of which, OT: the homogenization that occurred in WoW during Lich King. did they not understand that for a huge percentage of the "hardcore" player-base, min-maxing was the whole point? god, i used to have almost more fun playing around with the talent trees and gear simulators than with the actual game. then they took that away :(


oh, just thought of another one: Blitzball in FFX. not because it was bad, but because it was actually far more fun than the actual game.
 

bificommander

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Apr 19, 2010
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The lockon system in Gothic 2 made combat against more than 1 enemy a gigantic clusterf--- You couldn't pick your target, the idea of timing your attacks to counter the enemy blows went out of the window since you couldn't counter the guy you didn't lock on to, and when you almost had your target killed which would have allowed you to duel the remaining enemy normally, the enemies crossed paths and the lock-on system would now get stuck on the other fully healthy target instead. Pelting the enemy group with ranged attacks, then running away, rinse, repeat untill there was one left was the only thing that worked.

While I had fun with it, the ease of hijacking a helicopter or aircraft in Just Cause 2 killed a lot of the fun of discovering the world map in favor of flying over it at high speed, then fasttraveling to all the villages you passed over. Though they should have added a bit more features to make slowly exploring the island really fun (I'm pretty sure that the missions already take you to every single non-copy pasted location in the game).
 
Mar 30, 2010
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The Oblivion minigame for lockpicking. You wouldn't think an Orcish Barbarian with a Lockpick skill of 5/100 could pick the hardest lock in the game, but then you obviously haven't played Oblivion. Come to think of it the persuasion minigame was broken as well.

The QTEs in Mercs 2. Simply for being QTEs.

The stat grinding in San Andreas. That game was fun from start to finish, except when you were building up physical stats (lung capacity!) and weapon skills.