Say something bad about your favorite game.

[Strain42]

As someone who often receives hate mail for posting semi-successful stuff on the internet, I see a lot of "that sucks" "you suck" "try sucking less" etc. etc. and truth be told, that annoys me. Not because of the possibility that I, or stuff I do, may in fact suck, but because there's no context behind it.

But then I thought about something else. I also get annoyed by flat out praise. The people who when asked about a game or movie they like just go "It's great."

The point that admittedly I'm spending more time getting to than I should is that flat out praise of something isn't much better than flat out insults of something.

So I want everyone reading this (especially you, yes YOU, with the face) to try an experiment with me. Think of your favorite game, or if you don't have one just whatever tickles your fancy at the moment or one you just really like, then think about and present to the rest of the class a flaw with the game.

My favorite video game of all time is Legend of Mana because it's well written, has a variety of quirky, detailed characters, good replay value and decently fun co-op

However, to criticize it, the combat is incredibly repetitive with the same enemies spawning in the same place every time you enter an area, and while the game does a find job setting up a world with interesting characters, the ending itself feels fairly anticlimactic.

 

[Zhukov]

Spoiler: Bioshock

Bioshock.

- The moral choice system is shallow and feels as if it was crowbarred in entirely for the sake of being there. What's more, there's barely any reason to take the evil option since Tenenbaum's gifts give you enough adam to almost make up the balance.

- Weapons could stand to be a lot more inventive. We're in a steampunk-ish undersea would-be utopia and we're still being handed the ol' pistol, SMG, shotgun, grenade launcher etc. Although I guess the plasmids kinda make up for it.

- The vita-chambers are silly. They defang all the threats by making death have no consequence. Fortunately you can turn them off in the options, but still...

- The game takes a decided dip in quality during the final act. Basically, everything after the Ryan confrontation carried a distinct hint of "meh".

- The game is way too easy overall. By the third level you'll be swatting big daddies down with relative ease, which is a shame since they were awesome enemies and it would have been nice for them to remain threatening. I have no problem keeping things accessible to newcomers, but that's what the 'easy' setting is for.

- A proper neutral ending would have been nice, rather than just the evil ending with the voiceover being read in a slightly different tone of voice.

- It's a great game. If you haven't played it I recommend looking into it.

Spoiler: ME2

This is fun, I'm gonna try another one.

Mass Effect 2

- The whole idea of the Lazarus project is derp-tastic. The notion of being able to bring a person back to life strains the good ol' suspension of disbelief something fierce. But they didn't even do anything interesting with it. With the exception of a few scenes, the whole literally-back-from-the-dead angle carries no weight whatsoever. Why kill off the protagonist when they're back in the fight after just one cutscene?

- The visual design of the female characters. More specifically, Miranda's skintight bodysuit and Jack's cupless leather boob-harness... thing. Yeah, it's basically the old 'chainmail bikini' complaint in a different setting. See, nobody dresses like that outside of a comic convention and especially not when they're expecting to enter combat on a regular basis. I suppose you could argue that the designs suit the character's personalities, but surely your artists can convey "stuck up perfectionist with daddy issues" and "primal nihilist who no longer gives a shit" without resorting to this. Oh, and then there's Samara. A vigilante warrior-monk who runs about in high heels and what looks like a cleavage-friendly swimsuit with pauldrons? Yeah, we all know what's going on here, especially since you were clearly able to resist the temptation to dress Grunt in an armoured thong. Seriously Bioware, you're classier than that. If I want to see scantily clad hot chicks on a screen (and hey, who doesn't every now and again?) then I'll just consult the internet.

- Planet scanning. Seriously, what the fuck? How did that get through without a single person raising their hand and pointing out that it was really fucking boring? Granted, it was less tedious and time-consuming than driving around a palette-swapped mountain range in a tank apparently built of solid helium, but that's not saying much.

- You do not need to use security mechs as enemies in damn near every level. Hell, it's a wonder that anyone uses them at all since half the time they're apparently going rogue or getting hacked.

- Is it just me, or are Thane's legs bizarrely short? If all your aliens are going to look suspiciously humanoid then you can at least get the proportions right.

- Arrival sucked donkeys, which was a nasty shock after the fantastic Lair of the Shadow Broker. Arrival's plot had more holes than... a thing full of holes. (Spoilers follow) Most prominently, why would an indoctrinated person explain to Shepard exactly how to fuck up the Reapers' day, then helpfully maintain the systems required to do so despite having at least several days to sabotage them?

- Despite the above, the game is awesome.

 

[Hal10k]

Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing does, in fact, have a few compatibility issues.

 

[LookingGlass]

To quote Yahtzee:

The levels are ugly, and everyone looks the same.

Spoiler

Video[/youtube]

Although honestly, those never really bothered me. The level design is great, and that's what's important. And I didn't really care about everyone sharing a body build and just being skinned differently. Bad things... hmm. Well:

1. The stealth is mostly based enemies having a ridiculously short viewing distance

2. It was pretty horribly optimised at the time. You could get it run OK, but the loading times were ridiculous and you'd often need to cross loading barriers a few times to complete objectives. Fortunately this is one of those issues that goes away with time and better technology.

3. There weren't enough swimming or environmental hazard sections to make the corresponding skills useful.

 

[Strain42]

To mention another one, I'd like to talk about Persona 4. Persona 4 is a fun game, gameplay wise it takes the unique system P3 came up with and improves it quite a bit (dumbs down a few things in the combat, but fine, whatever)

However, the game boasts itself as a mystery novel, it's supposed to be some grand whodunit, but the murderer is obvious, but most of the game gets really stretched out by the characters being stupid (I know that sounds harsh, but while on a stakeout they have everybody chase one guy, on a stakeout you're supposed to leave at least one person there)

Also, the game tries to be funny, and to its credit, sometimes succeeds. But a lot of the scenes go on for way too long, try too hard to be funny and add little to nothing to the plot. So it's kinda like watching a production of Hamlet where the actors take a break every 15 minutes for an all cast pie fight.

I like P4, but it's got a lot of problems.

 

[Philol]

Bioshock 2:

Bioshock came to a very good conclusion that didn't need to be developed into a second game, this said I still love the second Bioshock and I'm glad it was made.

Fallout New Vegas:

The DLC, whilst excellent, took levelling up too far. 50 levels of game for what you get seems to just drag on once you've finished everything and only have the main story line or at least the last objective of the main story line left.

 

[Tonz of Fun]

The Monster Hunter Series.

The games are enjoyable to me but the fact that they keeping jumping from platform to platform and leaving a few of the games stuck in Japan.

 

[Skin]

Halo:CE - everything that was wrong with that game can be summed up in one level... The Library. Its as though Bungie intended to make the worst level in the history of gaming, and later outdid themselves with "Cortana" from Halo 3...

 

[Tazzy da Devil]

Jak 2 - His arms are REALLY LONG! They kind of scare me.

 

[lordlillen]

kingdom hearts 2 the ''quicktime event system'' its weird seing as atlanticas system would have fit better then yust pressing triangle.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction.

...it ends.

....

...

..

Also, the textures were shoddy at times, the controls were weird (circle for jump?), not much variety in soldiers or civilian vehicles and vehicle control felt really...heavy.

 

[ImProvGamr]

Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

A lot of the game is just wandering around hoping to figure out what to do next. Not talking about the dungeons, it works there. I'm talking about the Overworld. The game expects you to just know exactly what you need to do to get to your next location, some of the necessary items of the game require some kind of clairvoyance in order to know how to get them, and even the best but unnecessary items are even more of a mystery. It's just frustrating to spend all your time aimlessly wandering.

 

[Scarim Coral]

Gotcha Force. While I do love the game alot but it can be very repetitive as every single level is kill all of the enemies Gotcha Borgs.
They can at least change the level objective like survive for [inset time] minutes or target only one specifit borg. There was a mission to protect your partner borg in one of the early mission but it still revolve around defeat all of the enemy borgs.

 

[shimyia]

ok so:
my favourite game: Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

the bad part: unballanced(bad) combat system

 

[Triangulon]

Half-life.

Following the brilliant boss sections of Blast Pit and Power Up, Gonarch and Nihilanth were disappointing.

 

[DrRockor]

Mirrors edge

The hit detection on pipes leaves something to be desired

 

[waj9876]

Steambot Chronicles.

The graphics were outdated for the time and it lagged a lot when facing a certain direction.

 

[The Night Angel]

Raiden, Raiden, a million times Raiden!!! Yes, I'm referring particularly to MGS2, though he still annoyed me in MGS4.
Also, the bad facial animations in oblivion.

 

[MrShowerHead]

ArmA II

One of the worst UIs I've seen so far.

Deus Ex Human Revolution

As someone already said, the stupid, STUPID boss fights (Luckily the DLC had a great boss) Also, the AI was sometimes quite dumb, some of the voice acting could have been better *cough* Pritchard *cough*

 

[Rossmallo]

Runescape.

You will never, ever find a shittier community than Runescape's. Yes. It's worse than COD's.