things you hate about games/franchises you love

[Jolly Co-operator]

Sly Cooper: The tank section in the second game. Some of the most frustrating tank controls I've ever experienced in a game. Even if the controls were fluid, a tank section doesn't exactly fit comfortably into a sneaky sandbox.

Pokemon: I'm fine with the gameplay not undergoing any major overhauls, but I'd like a change in story. Hell, Nintendo can still have me collect 8 shiny things to validate my worth as a human being if they want, but I'd like to do it in a context other than "beat gym leaders, beat evil team, beat league". I'm happy that Pokemon Black / White at least tried to deal with ideas such as morality and tolerance, but I think more change is needed.

Uncharted: Enemies laughing at you when you die. It's so infuriating, considering that I, just one man, had killed dozens of these guys' friends just a few minutes ago, and they have the nerve to laugh when they finally learn to aim their guns well enough to kill one guy.

Batman: Arkham City: Closing off certain side-quests if I finish the main story first.

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door: There's a bit too much backtracking in Chapter 4 for my taste (it's still one of my favorite games of all time, though).

Bastion: A few too many weapons. This is a very minor complaint, and it doesn't really hurt the game, it just seems a little excessive. For example, I don't think that both the spear and the machete were necessary, as they're both throw-able melee weapons. I know the spear has more range, and the machete attacks faster, but the range of the spear feels superfluous, considering the wide variety of ranged weapons already available (disclaimer: I'm not implying that the machete does not totally kick ass, because it certainly does).

 

[SoranMBane]

Fallout: New Vegas: It's so unstable that it pretty much becomes unplayable after playing it for enough hours. Unlike Fallout 3, which I've only finished twice because the ending is terrible, I've only finished New Vegas twice because the game won't let me finish it again no matter how much I want to.

The Dead Space franchise: Dead Space 3's entire existence. Now, I've played enough of it to know that Dead Space 3 still has a lot of the talent and some of the passion behind it that the first two had, especially with the weapons crafting system, which is a great evolution of the weapon upgrade system of the previous games and genuinely fun to tinker with. But at the same time, I just want it to die in a fire. Co-op, cover-based shooting, human enemies; it's everything I never wanted the franchise to become. I nearly cried when I saw the first gameplay trailers for DS3.

 

[Norithics]

Dark Souls: The PVP. It can be good, but most often it's just miserable.

Megaman X series: Zero's goddamn saber never comboed correctly on bosses, which was just maddening from beginning to end. They never fixed it until Megaman Zero.

Megaman Zero series: The fact that they never let you skip the ridiculously lengthy transfer animations on a portable game. Also the ball-busting ranking system that makes the game actually harder if you don't ace every stage.

Castlevania: Stairs. Good lord, stairs. It reached its zenith of ridiculousness in Super Castlevania IV where you could moonwalk backward up them.

Sonic the Hedgehog: This series needed widescreen before it was a thing. There is just no possible way to see all the crap coming that you needed to. Ninja Warriors got the screen that Sonic was supposed to have, methinks.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The Last of Us:

AI companions knocking enemies into a different animation, causing you to miss a shot. This can even happen when you're about to deliver the killing blow with a melee weapon, and Ellie or someone else knocks them out of that position. It's rare, but when it happens it's one too many.

Also, the amount of characterisation given to Ellie during gameplay can ironically sometimes break the immersion. Same with the other AI companions.

Okami:

The platforming sucks ass since the art style prevents you from gauging any sort of depth. Also the controls just don't mesh well at all with platforming gameplay.
The game also just goes on for too long. Once you finished Sei'an City the game really should've ended shortly after, but it just keeps going. Not only that, it strays way too far away from the characters we've come to care about.

inFamous 2:

The character of Nix is just badly designed, badly written, and most of all badly acted. It's like someone at Sucker Punch looked at Jack from Mass Effect 2 and thought "Let's create an even more juvenile version of that."

And shock grenades are pretty much useless untill you get the sticky upgrade.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Yakuza series: the fact there arent more of this game.

Japan is getting the first two, remastered in HD both digitally and physically for the Wii U AND NOBODY ELSE.

---

Fallout New Vegas is an open world but if you go anywhere other than where you need to go at earlier levels you will be murdered by either bees or, deathclaws...nice invisible wall jerks.

Wii U...why can't you hold onto exclusive titles?! Yeah you still have Bayonetta 2 but you couldn't hold onto Ninja Gaiden for a full year and, Rayman Legend didn't even have a chance to freaking release! Also: update the e-Shop more than once a week, especially the virtual console.

...Final Fantasy XIII...

New Super Mario Bros; I like it but I would rather it be more like Mario Bros 3 in that there are a ton of power-ups instead of a single new one as seen in the last couple of NSMB titles. The NSMB games are fun but they're just not as replayable as World was.

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword...why isn't there a version or, patch that lets me play with the classic controller? Twilight Princess on the Gamecube was better than the Wii version and a version of Skyward Sword with traditional controls that don't need to be calibrated every time you swing your sword would vastly improve a game that I can barely play.

 

[The Wykydtron]

BlazBlue: Fucking PURPLE THROWS! WHY?! WHO THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA?!

Basically, if you're comboing someone and you're close enough for a throw you can hit the throw command mid-combo and it throws them. If your character has good combo potential after a throw (like Lambda or something) then it's a free reset. A reset that you get before your even finished your original combo.

Yes I know that the throw break time is slightly longer but any amount of latency + it being hard to predict unless you know the guy is going to do it makes it nearly impossible.



Persona 4: Arena: Kanji. Unless i'm playing Chie or Labrys then he's marginally less ridiculous than usual. Chie because High Counter ruins his lol command grab lol half health lol bullshit and Labrys can play keepaway with Ariadne. Which I hate doing by the way but i'll be damned if I willfully run into melee range against Kanji.

I would say Naoto does the best against him but the very second he gets in it's gg. He could be on 1HP and still 100-0 you because lol Kanji.

 

[Razentsu]

[HEADING=3]Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition[/HEADING]
Okizeme (wake up game) in SFIV can get pretty nasty. When a player is knocked down, certain characters (such as Akuma, Seth and Cammy) can force the downed player to play a brutal guessing game, where if the downed player guesses wrong, he or she takes damage and is led back into that same knock down situation. The defender would typically have to guess against four or five (relatively safe!) offensive options, which makes escaping these knock down situations very difficult. What's worse is that even if the defender guesses correctly, he/she will likely be in a position where the attacker can continue his or her offence. The defender would be in a better situation, but it would still be an unfavourable one.

SFIV players appropriately call this cycle of wrong guesses and knock downs the "vortex." SFIV players despise the vortex because it is a tactic that can very easily turn a winning match into a losing match the moment a sweep or a throw connects. Because of vortex, I've certainly lost matches where I did not feel like I was being outplayed.

But whatever, only a few characters are capable of setting up the vortex, and Capcom will likely be tweaking those characters anyway for the upcoming Ultra Street Fighter IV.

 

[Plucky]

Pokemon: The extensive Metagame, IVs/EVs and the fact that a Pokemon's learnset and stats means for a pretty stiff metagame, apparently Drizzle is banned because rain boosts water moves but also doubles Pokemon's speed if they have Swift Swim. (possibly disaterous if some Swift Swimmers can learn Thunder since it's 100% accuracy in rain) which indirectly leads to the game filled with loads of Excadrills or Scizors or something...as of typing, Smogon lists 51 Pokemon in Overused, 5 in Borderline and 59 Underused...


Final Fantasy: Just because every game after 10 was hazy at best, with the combined advancement of graphical progress and several gameplay differences, some entries after 10/11 doesn't even seem to be RPGs anymore, or at least some aspects of previous games in the series slimmed down, think the only thing i'm aware of 11 is that fan-art seems to pair Penello with Fran or something...i forget if 11 is the MMO or 12..yeah, that's so many titles that it's recognisability is turning into slush a bit, even for people who isn't major fans of the franchise, does it really need 2 MMOs?

Super Mario Bros; Only because every new main title is the best, until the next one comes, though most games before the 3d jump still retains their charm and difficulty (and in some cases such as World and 2, gameplay) it wasn't until around 3/World that it influenced the 2D subseries (NSMB), then there's unusual cutbacks or "manatees" such as 3D Land's/Galaxy 2's world map rather than having a hub, though 3D Land's stages were Mario Galaxy Like but linear, post 64, i can honestly say that Galaxy just seems better than Galaxy 2 because the content was more original and it gave a surprising character with actual personality in a series where continuity and consequences are ignored. (Rosalina! <3)

 

[sextus the crazy]

Pokemon: The extensive Metagame, IVs/EVs and the fact that a Pokemon's learnset and stats means for a pretty stiff metagame, apparently Drizzle is banned because rain boosts water moves but also doubles Pokemon's speed if they have Swift Swim. (possibly disaterous if some Swift Swimmers can learn Thunder since it's 100% accuracy in rain) which indirectly leads to the game filled with loads of Excadrills or Scizors or something...as of typing, Smogon lists 51 Pokemon in Overused, 5 in Borderline and 59 Underused...

Having two pokemon with drizzle and swift swim on the same team is banned. Having a drizzle or swift swim is A-okay.

OT: Company of Heroes: Too little building space. Also, unrealistic weapon ranges (not as bad given the small maps and zoom).