The soft underbelly of games you like

[Flying-Emu]

Halo (series): The gameplay got repetitive after a point, the story was ridiculous (Oops, uh, yeah, there's MORE than one Halo that we totally forgot about. Sorry d00d), and the controls made me want to beat my face against a bed of nails (at least until it launched for PC)

Final Fantasy VII: The story was confusing, the combat system was touted as "New, and innovative" when it was just a rehash of a system in place since FFIV (I think that's what it is, it's the one with Cecil the Dark Knight and Kain and such), and the graphics were disorientating.

Psychonauts for the PC had serious control issues... The controls never reacted like they should and the camera as bloody annoying.

Just wanted to point out that making the camera work in 3d games is an art form, and one that (as far as I know) no platformer has succeeded in.
If you know one that has, I'd love to know

 

[artemisfox]

Interesting concept... it'll be interesting to find out what some critics believe to be the soft underbelly of Citizen Kane (aside from the fact that it is not relevant in any way anymore).

actually i found a few things wrong with the movie >.>

anyway, my two cents. Supermario 64, sure it was fun and all but the camera was so uncoperative and irritating that it killed me more than it should.

Metroid prime:echoes, the scanning system looks far too dumbed down for my taste (instead of small scan blocks, entire sections of buildings or machinery was highlighted ), and grabbing info on enemies was far too downplayed (seriously, that stuff was actually interesting and made me want to fins more stuff)

 

[Altorin]

anyway, my two cents. Supermario 64, sure it was fun and all but the camera was so uncoperative and irritating that it killed me more than it should.

If you're being serious, and I really can't see any reason other then my dumbfoundedness that you even said "sure it's fun" following Superman 64.

Superman 64 is generally held to be the worst game on the N64 by a large margin. It's also held by a lot of people (myself included) as one of the worst games in the history of games.

I'm just completely dumbfounded.

Superman 64 is all soft underbelly.

 

[CSherman]

Both S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games ---> bugs.

 

[artemisfox]

anyway, my two cents. Supermario 64, sure it was fun and all but the camera was so uncoperative and irritating that it killed me more than it should.

If you're being serious, and I really can't see any reason other then my dumbfoundedness that you even said "sure it's fun" following Superman 64.

Superman 64 is generally held to be the worst game on the N64 by a large margin. It's also held by a lot of people (myself included) as one of the worst games in the history of games.

I'm just completely dumbfounded.

Superman 64 is all soft underbelly.

*cough* super mario 64 is what i said, without the space. but sweet jesus did superman suck badly. I agree the entire game was a 'how to NOT make a game' display

 

[Altorin]

I'm sorry.. I'm pretty tired, and everytime I looked at it I saw "Superman"

 

[Not Good]

MGS 3 Snake Eater's stuck up its own ass camera. But the rest of the game is great.

They fixed that in Subsistence. Fully rotational, my friend. And while I preferred the 3rd person camera in Subsistence, I do in fact enjoy the fixed camera angle. The camera angle is set very well, more so than in most games where you have to move the camera a lot to get a coherent scheme of things.

 

[Fiskmasen]

Fallout 3: The ending(s (although they are basically the same thing)). Needn't say more, great game otherwise, mostly

Shadow of the Colossus: One of my favorite games of all time, unfortunately the technical aspect lacks in some instances. FPS-drops are pretty frequent -- at least for me, could be my PS2 going crazy -- which makes me think that they should have waited for the PlayStation 3 in order to release it.

Half-Life 2: I absolutely hate the mute hero in games, so this goes for any game with Mr. "Hey, not talking is cool" as the main character. Why I put it under Half-Life 2 is because Gordon Freeman was the only thing detracting from the story. Valve ought to have let us play as Alyx instead. Or anyone. That could talk.

 

[Altorin]

Shadow of the Collosus - finding the f**king Collosi. I'm up to the eight and I've honestly been going in circles for an hour.

How else are they going to boast such insane game lengths?

actual content?

Poppycock

 

[EzraPound]

- Super Mario Galaxy
- featured fragmented environments that were less atmospheric than those in Mario 64
- seemed paternalistic at times in its constant giving of free lives and power-ups, and
why the hell do the cannons fire you directly to where you aim instead of
encompassing how far you'd fall en route to reaching your point of destination?
- made you play through the game twice in order to beat it fully, which is uninventive
- had a stupidly obscure storyline

- Conker's Bad Fur Day
- the single-player has an uneven difficulty curve which can result in frustration
- the single-player is inexcusably short, lasting between six and seven hours
- several of the game modes are underdeveloped, which is oft-noticeable in multi-play
- when you strip away the humour, much of the gameplay is simply barebones 3D platforming

- StarCraft
- the graphics were outdated for its time, and look no better than a high-end WCII mod
- the plot is comprised entirely of uninteresting science fiction clichés
- the high-brow strategy inherent to the game often simply results in never-ending
stalemates - particularly in high-resource maps - and the online learning curve is high

- GTA: Vice City
- the game offered few new additions over GTA III, save gimmicks like property and bikes
- the VC map was basically 'the strip', a few never-ending roads with little hilly terrain
- the single-player missions were less interesting than GTA III's, and could be done easily

- Super Mario World
- as Miyamoto admitted, the game added little to SMB3's overarching formula
- SWM often felt padded, as the 'save' feature detracted from the difficulty
- the game rarely pushed level design to the same limits as SMB3 - SMB3 featured a world
where the enemies change size, for example, and one where the whole environment is tanks
and gunboats (not to mention an array of projectiles being shot at you)
- SMW featured less replay value than SMB3, as the latter begged to be played through many
times in order to witness all the branching paths within it

 

[LisaB1138]

X-ing through all the dialog in Okami's cutscenes. Normal subbing would have been fine.

Turning Kratos into a toddler throwing a temper tantrum in GOW2. What a baby. Grow up already.

No good unlockables for Beyond Good and Evil. I collected 88 pearls for . . . nothing?

 

[DYin01]

Fallout 3 (and Oblivion, since it uses the same engine): Obviously the animations and numerous bugs. I love them both to bits, but it's so buggy sometimes. The pathfinding of allies is incredibly bad too.

 

[BlueInkAlchemist]

I played through Portal 4 times the first day I played it.

Agreed. Way too short.

On that subject, does anybody see the potential for dual antagonists in Portal 2? Cave Johnson should be making an appearance, and GLaDOS is still alive. Feel like it could be a bit like System Shock 2, only more brilliant and hilarious.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

Suikoden V despite having some great plotting sometimes suffers from some truly aweful game design. Some dungeons are unabashedly bad, many of the 108 characters are useless and it's interface was spawned from hell.

Bioshock while amazingly atmospheric and well plotted it got annoyingly repetitive... and

Spoiler

Frank Fontaine was a lame final villain. I liked the twist with Ryan, but why replace him with such a lame villain?

 

[rossatdi]

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is a classic mired by a bulging, putrid underbelly. My particular version had doors that wouldn't open (but needed to) and repeated re-spawning enemies.

The obvious one (amazed it's not been mentioned) is Half Life and Xen. Personally I didn't find it so bad but it's a classic ***** subject.

 

[BlueInkAlchemist]

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines is a classic mired by a bulging, putrid underbelly. My particular version had doors that wouldn't open (but needed to) and repeated re-spawning enemies.

I've had similar issues with VtM:B as well as the occasional save game that, when loaded, assumes I meant to save the fact I had the fire button pressed as well. It's very frustrating to spawn in unable to move and emptying the clip of your Steyr Aug into a nearby wall while the Sabbat vampire you meant to be shooting at runs up to chew on your face.

 

[scnj]

Dead rising's lack of free-roam, care-free sandbox mode. Let me run around and kill zombies at my leisure goddamnit.

On my first three play throughs, all I did was run around and kill zombies at my leisure.

Guitar Hero World Tour's setlist. They have access to original recordings of Iron Maiden songs, but they manage an 85 song game where less than ten songs interest me. I know it's an opinion thing, but come on. Tokio Hotel? Lostprophets? Really? The first three had an at least decent balance between new and old stuff, but this one seems to be pandering to the masses a bit too much.

 

[laikenf]

I LOVE Fallout 3, it is my favorite game of all time and everytime I play it I just seem to like it more and more. But, I really think they could've done a better job with the 3rd person view; it's a shame that it's so poorly implemented because I do prefer the 3rd person view over the 1st person one; and as a matter of fact I do most of the exploring on 3rd person, but when the combat kicks in the 1st person view is simply a no-brainer (one cannot possible even consider to fight on the 3rd person perspective, it just doesn't work well).