What Ruins a Game For You?

[The_Waspman]

And one thing that I remind myself of whenever I start a new game in the Mass Effect series is that at some point, I have to put up with Ali Hillis's bad portrayal of Liara T'Soni. And the sad thing is that as a character, she's far more appealing to me than Ashley Williams, whom I kill every time I play the first game (and am generally impatient to do so). And then I continue the romance with her in Mass Effect 2 because Jack annoys me, I friend-zone Tali, and I don't romance Miranda on principle due to her being walking fan-service (though I give Bioware points for basically making sure that her characterization is a commentary on highly attractive, supercilious, bad-ass women in games).

I haven't played Mass Effect 3 yet, so once my Xbox is fixed, we'll see if Hillis's voice acting has improved... ah, who am I kidding?

Well, small consolation, but in my opinion, her voice acting improves a lot, especially in the second half of the game. Its strange when she plays Liara, because her delivery is flat and repetative, yet her portrayal of Lightning in FF XIII (who is a much flatter character) has more life to it. Maybe because in FF she has to deliver a lot of long droning monologues, while in ME she's supposed to be interacting with other people (and its obvious she's recorded her lines in a sound booth, alone.)

OT, what can really take me out of a game is hitting a brink wall in terms of progress. In some games I can deal with it (Dark Souls for example, because its designed that way) but things like that god awful asteriods section in Dead Space, or there was one jump I was incapable of making in Mirrors Edge in chapter... 4, I think. Made me leave both games alone for months.

 

[DigitalAtlas]

Bad design choices in a quality product.

For instance, getting the Gaea armor piece in Dark Dizzy's stage in Mega Man X5.

Anyone who's done that, say with me: WTF WERE THEY THINKING?!?!

 

[mrpropal]

1) Lack of challenge, I like to learn something from a beating.

2) Art direction.

3) Prompts on screen.

 

[Shavon513]

If it has a boring story, or impossible boss battles. Give me a classic rpg, please!

 

[Jaeke]

Repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition.

Get it? It's repetition.

 

[Jaeke]

Objective compasses. I can't stand them! It seems like just every game to come out these days uses them, too. This really hurt Skyrim for me. Human Revolution, too, although there were... other things wrong with that game, which I won't go into now.

This. I always end up following a little dot on the map or compass instead of exploring and enjoying the scenery...

For the same reason, I think Fast Travel kinda ruins the game for me. Just having the option to teleport from quest to quest ruins my experience.

I never, EVER understood this. If you don't like it...

DON'T USE IT

 

[SeanSeanston]

For me, it's that feeling of really having to consult external sources to properly understand the game or get the most out of it.

Granted, maybe a few secrets and whatnot are good but... I don't like feeling obligated to do "research" on a game beforehand in case I miss something I couldn't reasonably have discovered myself, or do something that prevents me from obtaining something or what have you.

Another example but from a different angle is something like Street Fighter IV where there's no tutorial and you basically have to study the game online for a while to know what's really going on. I just wish you could sit down with the game and it could run through all the stuff and then you could sit there practicing until you feel comfortable. I played SFIV and took the time to understand it reasonably, then when I got SSFIVAE much later, I was being destroyed by a Normal CPU on the 4th or so fight. I just know there's no point playing the game on its own, I'll have to go studying for this really sharp difficulty curve. True, I can look in the manual but some moves are hard to know when to use and whatnot and it's all a bit hard to take in at once when it's just controls and descriptive text.

 

[Twilight_guy]

The players. In games with multiplayer the other players generally piss me off. As always, for every good guy there are 3 assholes being douches.

As for the actual game itself... nothing. The game might do well, it might fail, but both are useful for potential learning experiences in the end.

 

[217not237]

A bad story. I don't even notice the gameplay, story is all that matters. That is why my favorite games are Silent Hill 2, Metal Gear Solid 3, 2 JRPGs, and a visual novel.

 

[Nargleblarg]

My first thought is that I honestly believe I would have enjoyed Too Human if not for its utterly hideous controls. THE F***ING R-STICK IS FOR THE CAMERA TOO HUMAN!!

*Breathe*

....anyway other than being unable to actually play the game the only other real thing that can ruin a game for me is if Characters are just badly written or stuck to a stereotype it's very annoying.

 

[Fidelias]

Sudden difficulty spikes are the worst for me, especially in RPG's. This happens a lot in the Final Fantasy games, you'll be playing the game, destroying random encounters AND bosses, then you get to a boss that demolishes you. As in, you can't even land a friggin attack. Then you're forced to spend hours grinding up your levels just for it to happen again.

When a game forces you to wander around to find the next objective. I don't mind if you have to, say, find an exit to a haunted forest. But if you have a game with a large world and the game just tells you 'EXPLORE!' and doesn't give you hints about where to go for the main quest, that ruins it for me. I like exploring in games, but I want to be able to get to the next plot area quickly once I get bored.

 

[shrekfan246]

bad PC ports(looking at you binary domain, WHY WOULD YOU NOT USE ENTER AND ESCAPE AS MENU BUTTONS)

What, you're not even going to mention how the mouse controls exactly like an analog stick would, making it practically pointless to not use an Xbox 360/PS3 controller while playing anyway? Yeah, don't get me wrong, as a cut-and-dry third-person shooter I've been having fun with it, but the PC controls are terrible.

OT: Hm. It's a hard thing to decide, really, because it's never really the same thing for me. I don't mind how lengthy and bloated the cut-scenes are in the Metal Gear Solid series because they're still usually amusing/interesting and the gameplay is phenomenal (in my opinion, of course), but the endless amount of cut-scenes and boring, bloated dialogue in Final Fantasy XIII certainly helped kill it for me.

Massive difficulty spikes are probably the only universal thing that will kill my interest in a game. If something has its health and damage artificially beefed up for no reason other than to be a bullet/arrow/magic sponge (depending on whether it's an RPG or FPS, etc.) then it really frustrates me and saps away my will to keep playing. For instance, the ridiculous spider robot in the ... second chapter? in Vanquish. I might go back and try that fight again some day, but it really made me feel like never playing the game again when throwing everything I have at the thing over and over again seemingly makes no dent in its health and then it crushes me in one or two hits.

 

[BENZOOKA]

Broken scripts. If there's something even remotely logical I do and I cannot continue the objective because of bad design, that ruins a lot. Especially in the beginning.

 

[Hydro14]

Hit-box to graphic dissonance in action games. As far as I'm concerned if the game is going to revolve around me moving the avatar out of the path of an enemy swinging a sword, I expect not to to take damage when the graphics don't collide. I have had this crop up in action RPGs more times than I'd care to mention.

Also, needless padding out of sections that does nothing except artificially lengthen the game. Yes, Xenoblade Chronicles, I'm looking at you. Worthy of a dishonourable mention is poor or no camera control as a few others have stated; it's not quite enough to ruin a game for me on its own though.

 

[MrHide-Patten]

I could not stomach the blatant misogyny in Metroid Other M. It was so bad that it tore down the dry wall and I saw an almost unconscious hatred/extreme fear of women by Nintendo.

Why does Zelda have to dress up like a man to be productive? Why did Samus's (Samuses?) gender have to be ambiguous in the first place? Why when Princess Peach gets a video game her powers come from this weird feminine thing called 'emotions'?
I could be here all damn day, sure big tits on a character isn't doing women a service, but this crap is downright evil.

 

[skywolfblue]

1) Bugs. Nothing like a crash, freeze, or characters bugging out on terrain to ruin your gaming day.

2) Bad Controls/Gameplay.

I'll forgive pretty much anything else, but those two are absolutely the worst.

 

[Smeatza]

A feeling of progression. If I feel like I'm achieving nothing I'm not going to be playing very long.

 

[Judgement101]

References to other games or a different form of media.

Spoiler

Prime example of this is The Witcher 2, you need to find a ring and then an entire scene is just a LotR reference

 

[Mikhael Angelo]

Okay. First and foremost, bad voice acting. That's something that gets me. When they sound like they're reading an essay on the dangers of Global Warming to the polar ice-caps and they just want to go home, I can't play the game. I don't feel like I'm into it because they aren't.

Then secondly and finally, lack of originality. The series that comes to mind is Call of Duty. It's the same game over and over and over. You're essentially paying $60 for an expansion pack when you get the game and it irritates me to no end.

Those are usually what turns me off to a game, but that's just me.

 

[teebeeohh]

bad PC ports(looking at you binary domain, WHY WOULD YOU NOT USE ENTER AND ESCAPE AS MENU BUTTONS)

What, you're not even going to mention how the mouse controls exactly like an analog stick would, making it practically pointless to not use an Xbox 360/PS3 controller while playing anyway? Yeah, don't get me wrong, as a cut-and-dry third-person shooter I've been having fun with it, but the PC controls are terrible.

I didn't mention it because having the mouse behave like a controller(i especially love it if the deadzone is not removed and the advantage of my 5600dpi mouse goes to waste) is in every bad port but it has been a long time since i saw somebody fuck up the menu that bad.