The most petty of criticisms

[VoidOfOne]

Mass Effect 3.

What the F@#$ happened to Emily Wong?! And who the heck is this Jessica Chobot person, and why should I care? And also, what the F@#$ happened to Emily Wong?!



P.S. I know what happened to Emily, and my reaction is more WHY they did that to her...

 

[Someone Depressing]

First-person shooters that have RPG mechanics.

There are no builds, no strategy, no character development, or sense of achievment, or even the most basic of RPG mechanics: Statistics. And yet it has a level system. I understand your skill with specific weapons going up as you use them; but why do I need to have a kill count of 3,000~4,500 to put on fucking face paint? It's so pointless.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

The American release of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Gates of Infinity, took out the ability to choose the gender of your partner. I know it doesn't (Apparently at least, because I haven't been able to get around to playing it yet) really effect the dialogue but I'm still disappointed.

 

[Zen Bard]

It drives me nuts in "Diablo III" (XBox version) when Zoltun Kulle, the main NPC in the "Betrayer of the Horadrim" quest (voiced by the great Steve Blum)always leaves with a sinister laugh...even after he's given helpful advice.

I get it. He's untrustworthy (no spoiler...it's in the freaking name of the quest). Quit beating me over the head with it.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Whenever there's a cutscene and your main character stands there and does nothing although they could be killing a bad guy/helping or whatever.

...not petty enough.

In Armored Core Verdict Day, a lot of the parts are visually similar within a group of parts and it reduces variety.

...not petty enough.

Not being able to retry a mission from the retire screen.

...reasonably petty.

Spelling 'orc' with a 'k'.

...petty enough.

The Dark Souls 2 falling animation is going to be stupid.

Ah, petty, we have arrived.

EDIT: Also, achievements that are either "got a certain way through the game" or "did this X times or for X amount of time", when it's something that's part of regular gameplay anyway.

 

[Vigormortis]

Zombie games where things other than headshots kill them. We have all of this mythos behind the headshot>zombie thing, but in games a few shots anywhere generally do the job as well. I would like centerline body shots with a weapon with enough penetration to take out the spine and keep it from walking as well as cutting off arms and legs to disable them, but headshots should be the only thing that kills them.

Egh, can't agree on this.

Zombie mythos extends waaaay beyond, and way before, the stereotypical Romero tropes. In fact, in some ancient zombie myths, a zombie can only be stopped by removing it's heart.

I can appreciate you preferring the Romero tropes within the genre, but they are certainly not the origin nor the end-all-be-all of the genre.

Besides, as someone else said in this thread, games like the Left 4 Dead series have modes where only headshots are effective. You may find exactly what you're looking for within them.

The Prototype games need a some sort of body-count statistic. I'm not a violent person, and even in video games, I try to take non-lethal approaches, so this isn't about some sort of sick satisfaction. I'm legitimately curious as to just how high that number would be.

Actually, it does track those stats. It tracks how many civilians you've killed, how many soldiers you've killed, and how many infected you've killed. It also tracks the total sum of your destruction in the form of a dollar amount, as well as dozens of other stats.

These stats are displayed in both the game menu and at the end of any given event or mission.

I have a friend who always ALWAYS seems to have some petty thing to say about how a character runs.
"He runs like a moron", "He runs too stiff", "He runs blah blah".

It blows my mind that someone can care about something like this.

I actually agree with your friend.

A crappy, poorly done run or movement animation can ruin a game for me. Especially if I'm being forced to look at my character, and specifically that animation, for long stretches.

It just detracts from the immersion of the game if my character is visibly moving like some clunky, ill-designed automaton.

An uncommon animation looking quirky doesn't bother me. It's just an occasional "joke". But a bad animation that is perpetually present irks me quite a bit.

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

I've been considering checking out Borderlands 2, especially now that it's selling so cheaply, but one tiny stupid petty thing is stopping me. See, there's an NPC who recites Hamlet's "O that this too, too solid flesh would melt" speech in its entirety:


...but instead of pronouncing "fie" properly (it rhymes with "eye"), he pronounces it as "fee". It's incredibly petty, but I still haven't picked up the game because of it.

 

[Yokillernick]

X-COM Enemy Unknown/Within. So basically aliens invade Earth and as the Council says, you are humanities first and last line of defence, yet somehow instead of pouring most of their resources into your project they just basically give you like $150 per month and then wonder why there aren't any satellites over their countries and why sectoids are rummaging through people's bins.

 

[Smeatza]

Fuck you Bioware, secondary codex? As in "we already payed the guy to voice the codex in Mass Effect so let's just get him back for a few additional entries and just add a non-voiced" secondary codex.
NO BIOWARE you set your standard and you should have fucking stuck to it.
What do you expect me to do? Read these secondary codex entries? FUCK YOU I CAN'T GO BACK.

 

[sethisjimmy]

Link's elbow clips through his shield in the Wind Waker when he runs. For such a nice looking game it's just annoying that they overlooked something like that on the main character animation. I mean the shield is one of the first items! And they didn't fix it in the remake! Gah!

 

[camerinian]

I know it's essentially commonplace with every game in the genre, but it really annoys me in FPS games when I can't see my legs. The whole point of most FPS games is to immerse you into the game and place you into the shoes of this character. So when I can't even see the shoes you're being put into, it honestly pulls me right out of the immersion and reminds me that i'm really nothing more than a camera floating 6 feet above the ground with hands and a gun attached to it. Especially in games where hands are visible.

Like even in games like The Stanley Parable where you cannot see a single part of your body, or in Portal where the gun is held further down so that you can't see your hands, at least those games are consistent in not seeing body parts. But when there are visible hands but no feet, I feel more like a bizarre hovering mutant than a real person