Terrible design choices in otherwise excellent games?

[Brainwreck]

Dragon Age. The Fade.
*smashes monitor with keyboard, sets fire to everything, chuckles unnervingly*

 

[Brainwreck]

The forced stealth mission in Jedi Outcast (with the obligatory insta-fail outcome if you screw up just once). Not only is it incredibly aggravating, but it's jarringly out of place lore-wise. Kyle Katarn makes some lame-ass excuse about there being "too many troopers" to justify the segment's inclusion.

...

...are you shitting me, Kyle? They're Stormtroopers. They were hardly a threat to you even when you weren't a Jedi. You've scythed your way through Dark Troopers, Dark Jedi and God knows how many Reborn. You killed a Kell Dragon once with your bare fucking hands. You're the goddamn Chuck Norris of the Star Wars universe...and you're pissing your pants over a group of STORMTROOPERS?!

Also, all those finicky jump puzzles over bottomless chasms. Nothing destroys the illusion of being a badass Jedi faster than falling to your doom for the upteenth time.

Actually, you can murder them. In fact, the mission is probably easier if you just murder everyone. You just have to make sure the alarm button doesn't get pressed. Couple mines should help you deal with that.
Edit: Just realised Kyle actually beat a Kell Dragon to death with his bare hands before he even became a jedi.
I'm sad now.

 

[Ekit]

The decision to ruin Team Fortress 2 with constant content updates that clash with the art style and ruin the balance.

(Seriously? Laser guns? What the hell were you thinking, Valve?)

 

[NZT48]

The Auto-Dialogue in Mass Effect 3. I loved it how in Mass Effect 1&2 almost all conversations had the dialogue wheel. Another thing that I didn't like in Mass 3 was how they removed the middle neutral option.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

WOW. If they took out the grinding and made it offline, it would be great. Now i dont mind grinding to a point, people that play rpgs know that at times you have to for coin or level up a bit. But WoW was constant grinding and had shitty people, some of which took the game way to seriously. The game world and characters etc was fine.

Eve, i have never played it. I loved Elite 1 and 2. But i just dont have time to put the months of play into Eve to get to the fun ships etc I love reading about it though. So i guess there is nothing wrong with the game, just the time investment needed sucks.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Surprised the tower defence in Assassin's Creed: Revelations hasn't been mentioned. That was the most ridiculously out of place addition I've ever seen. But, then I'm a console gamer and I don't get out much. But seriously. Why. Why do it. What, did these assassins just lie down and take it whenever people attacked till Ezio showed up?

I agree. Every time i failed one of the defence missions i wished they would just let me jump down as Ezio and kill the enemy on my own. Just seemed stupid you sat there and watched your base get taken over.

 

[TwiZtah]

The decision to ruin Team Fortress 2 with constant content updates that clash with the art style and ruin the balance.

(Seriously? Laser guns? What the hell were you thinking, Valve?)

I see it more as because it's Team Fortress 2, they can go as bonkers as they want.

 

[cookyt]

Having just finished a run of Black Mesa Source, I can say that crouch jumping combined with first person platforming does not a happy gamer make. Great game, otherwise.

 

[zehydra]

I'm assuming the dev team ran out of time or money towards the end of Myst IV, because the game was an excellent nostalgia bomb/kidnapping mystery/classic sci-fantasy adventure game, with lots of dark twists, about-faces and jaw-dropping moments of awesome, all set to what remain some the prettiest graphics available.

And then it tuned into a New Age fever dream music video.

I... don't know.

It sort of recovered at the end, but the damage was done.

I dunno. I thought it kind of suffered from terrible voice acting.

Man, Myst III at least had Grima Wormtongue

 

[solemnwar]

Fallout: New Vegas taking place in... well, New Vegas. I do love New Vegas, but the ACTUAL GAME is the most tedious part. The DLCs which take me far, far away from the fucking Mojave are the best parts.

I'd like it better if it was just the Big MT... Old World Blues could've been its own games... *mumblemumble*


Also there's something about ME2 and ME3 which are a bit... off. They don't feel as futuristic as ME1 did, and I have no idea why. It's not the switch from overheating if you fire too much to thermal clips, that's not it, I really, really can't place what it is though, and it's beyond frustrating.

So... whatever happened between 1 and 2, I guess,

 

[Ekit]

The decision to ruin Team Fortress 2 with constant content updates that clash with the art style and ruin the balance.

(Seriously? Laser guns? What the hell were you thinking, Valve?)

I see it more as because it's Team Fortress 2, they can go as bonkers as they want.

I disagree. The best thing about TF2 was the near perfect balance and the uniqe and consistent art style.

With all the new updates the balance is ruined more and more which means that the gameplay suffers and with all the hats, accessories and particle effects the art style is just a mess.

I agree that TF2 was bonkers, or at least caricatured and funny. But I don't think Valve should be able to put whatever they want into the game just because it's funny or zany. You need some consistensy and I think that video games often benefit from the expression "less is more" when it comes to game design.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Long ago at double fine:
"So we're working on the last level and we want to come up with something challenging"
"How about we have a timed jumping puzzle... we haven't done that yet, and lets add in difficult moves that the player has never had to do before!"
"Ugh, isn't that kind of a big spike in difficulty and kind of confusing?"
"Nah, it'll be fine... DOUBLE fine!"
and thus the Meat Circus was born!

 

[LITSWE]

Some of the plasmids in Bioshock, particularly telekinesis and hypnotize Big Daddy, were horribly unbalanced.

 

[lacktheknack]

I'm assuming the dev team ran out of time or money towards the end of Myst IV, because the game was an excellent nostalgia bomb/kidnapping mystery/classic sci-fantasy adventure game, with lots of dark twists, about-faces and jaw-dropping moments of awesome, all set to what remain some the prettiest graphics available.

And then it tuned into a New Age fever dream music video.

I... don't know.

It sort of recovered at the end, but the damage was done.

I dunno. I thought it kind of suffered from terrible voice acting.

Man, Myst III at least had Grima Wormtongue

I will admit the voice acting was sub-par in Myst IV.

However, there wasn't much of it. The journal reading was optional, but admit it, it was sort of glorious.

 

[NZT48]

The Auto-Dialogue in Mass Effect 3. I loved it how in Mass Effect 1&2 almost all conversations had the dialogue wheel. Another thing that I didn't like in Mass 3 was how they removed the middle neutral option.

For that matter, the fucking wheel itself is a terrible thing. What is wrong with just reading what you're going to answer? It's so damn simple. Deus Ex did that, The Wicher did that, Gothic did that, all of them worked, so why fix what ain't broken? It never tells you what EXACTLY are you going to tell and it limits conversation options to six, which is laughable.

Yeah, I can see why some people don't like it. Like how sometimes you pick a dialogue and it says something different then what you thought you chose.

Yeah, I can see that you don't like the dialogue wheel, but I really don't see why you're so mad over a game mechanic. Many games have their own way to handle conversations, and player choices, this is a really simple fallback for many games. You don't really have to be so pissy about it. And so what if several games used that mechanic? If you want to be like, why not complain that 2d scrollers all are 2d, like Sonic, Super Mario, Castlevania. Are you asking for a game where it has open dialogue? Type, or say whatever you want at any point of the conversation? That's neigh on impossible. You seem pretty mad over this. You say that the dialogue wheel is terrible, please explain to me what's the "ideal" dialogue you're looking for.

 

[Spider RedNight]

I'm gonna extend the awful "tower defense" part from AC: Revelations and add naval warfare from III. I understand that naval warfare was important, but FORCING me to take part in it (especially if it doesn't hold my interest) made the entire story seem too linear, much like how half the time you HAD to kill someone at a specific moment in the game or another time you HAD to wait until everyone was gone. I understand that as a "historical fiction" game, things had to go a certain way, but I always figured Assassin's Creed could've been something of a paradox series; ooh, Ezio killed "so-and-so", notice how there's something just SLIGHTLY different in the game. That would've done well for personalization in the series. Maybe it's just me.

I'll also point out the "star wars" part of KotoR; I understand that turrets are PART of Star Wars, but then again, so is EVERYTHING ELSE in that game. It's almost as if Bioware/LucasArts was afraid that if they DIDN'T include turrets and ship-shooting in the game, the audience would forget that it's still a Star Wars game.

Also, I feel like ANY excellent game can be put off by escort quests. Insert any awesome game of your choice and, whether it has such quest(s) or not, ask yourself "What would happen if I had an escort quest?" You'd probably groan and either thank God that there AREN'T those or you moan and wonder why escort missions ARE in the game of your choice.