Who the hell thought THAT was a good idea?

[tippy2k2]

So I'm playing Battlefield Hardline (...what? It was free! Leave me alone) and they have kind of an interesting setup for their story in that their chapters are called "Episodes". I'm not sure why they do this because it's not a TV show or anything (well....maybe it is I suppose, I haven't beat it yet. Now that would be one hell of a twist...).

Anyway, like many TV Shows, they have a "Previously On..." thing where every time you leave the game, the game plays a little movie showing you what happened before. That seems like a great idea! I generally don't put games down long enough that I don't remember what happened as I only play one game at a time but it's a neat idea. However...

They also have a "Next Time On..." thing, which also could be kind of a cool idea except that if you quit in the middle of an episode, the "Next Time On..." thing still plays. I hope you didn't want to know what happened in the episode you're in because you know now sucka! Now granted, it's a Battlefield game so the story kind of takes a backdoor but it still seems like an incredibly stupid idea.

So let's mock some of the more questionable design choices of our games!

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Resident Evil 6

Who the hell thought it was a good idea to TAKE COVER by holding down AIM, and to AIM by flicking the RIGHT ANALOG STICK?

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

In one of the later Ezio Assassin Creed games, there's a weird minigame that plays out like Tower Defense. You have to defend a street as an army of Templars tries to storm down it, with you firing a cannon and commanding troops of assassins while (if memory holds) battalions of Templars try to lead a steam-powered tank to the end of the road to destroy your hideout.

Leaving aside the fact that it spits on the concept of any kind of historical realism, it totally misses the point of the Assassin/Templar war. The Templars are supposed to have the overwhelming force, while the Assassin's rely on misdirection and stealth to fight. It makes no sense that the Templars would just give up after fighting an open battle with you in the streets, when they clearly know where you're hiding.

As well, it ruins an opportunity for a really interesting variation on the same idea. Instead of a pitched battle, you could have Templar teams mounting an operation, trying to discreetly sweep a district looking for an Assassin hideout, and you need to fight them with stealth. You send out your recruits to kill or mislead the various Templar agents before they can find your hideout or do harm to your civilian agents in the area. They've already built the open world, it can't be that hard to people it with NPCs with an agenda at the expense of cordoning off the rest of the city. It takes something that is weirdly out of place in both gameplay and tone, and turns it into something that rewards you for building up your recruits and learning the map (and in turn giving you bonuses for how many people you save).

 

[WolfThomas]

In one of the later Ezio Assassin Creed games, there's a weird minigame that plays out like Tower Defense. You have to defend a street as an army of Templars tries to storm down it, with you firing a cannon and commanding troops of assassins while (if memory holds) battalions of Templars try to lead a steam-powered tank to the end of the road to destroy your hideout.

Leaving aside the fact that it spits on the concept of any kind of historical realism, it totally misses the point of the Assassin/Templar war. The Templars are supposed to have the overwhelming force, while the Assassin's rely on misdirection and stealth to fight. It makes no sense that the Templars would just give up after fighting an open battle with you in the streets, when they clearly know where you're hiding.

As well, it ruins an opportunity for a really interesting variation on the same idea. Instead of a pitched battle, you could have Templar teams mounting an operation, trying to discreetly sweep a district looking for an Assassin hideout, and you need to fight them with stealth. You send out your recruits to kill or mislead the various Templar agents before they can find your hideout or do harm to your civilian agents in the area. They've already built the open world, it can't be that hard to people it with NPCs with an agenda at the expense of cordoning off the rest of the city. It takes something that is weirdly out of place in both gameplay and tone, and turns it into something that rewards you for building up your recruits and learning the map (and in turn giving you bonuses for how many people you save).

At least you never really had to do it again if you didn't want. I only did it the first time, then kept whatever the requirement not to do it met.

 

[The Wykydtron]

As much as I like the combat in Valkyria Chronicles, I don't really understand why they made running your units into shooting range involve frantically spamming the aim button before your favourite troop gets shot down. The enemies shoot at your selected unit until the precise moment you start aiming with that unit in which case they stop all movement and shooting and let you line up perfect headshots at your leisure. Then the moment you stop shooting you have to SLAM the end turn button before the enemies realise that the unit has stopped firing and start shooting back.

It's fuckin' weird. Sort of charming in a way once you get used to it but still a bizarre design choice. Don't even get me started on the cover system. If a unit is crouching behind sandbags (and only sandbags) or lying prone in grass they are basically immortal. Deal with it.

Also fuck archers in Fire Emblem: Awakening. I get how archers get a damage bonus against flying units. I do, really. It's a reasonable trait for them to have. However there's a difference between "damage bonus" and "instant destruction from full HP from across the map" THROUGH WALLS! CORDELIA COME BACK I LOVED YOU NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

 

[tippy2k2]

In one of the later Ezio Assassin Creed games, there's a weird minigame that plays out like Tower Defense. You have to defend a street as an army of Templars tries to storm down it, with you firing a cannon and commanding troops of assassins while (if memory holds) battalions of Templars try to lead a steam-powered tank to the end of the road to destroy your hideout.

I have played most of the Assassins Creed games (from Black Flag below) and I completely forgot about that God forsaken minigame. That was....just awful in so many ways.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I don't think I'll ever understand the rationale behind making us meditate to drink potions in The Witcher 2. Not only does it make no sense from a design perspective (who is going to know when every difficult fight will start?), but it also makes no sense from a character-progression standpoint since Geralt was perfectly capable of drinking during combat throughout the first game!

 

[anthony87]

Dead Space 3:

Who thought that adding Co-op play

As shit as a lot of things in that game were I would happily stick up for the co-op gameplay. Now I'm probably in the minority there but I played it with a friend while we were both in contact over Skype and there was moments where my friend would be seeing shit that I couldn't because of that character he chose.

It was different enough that we played through it twice as each character just to see the differences. Fuck the rest of that game though. That 20 quid DLC that barely lasted an hour.....it still stings.

 

[CrimsonBlaze]

I've got two: one not so bad and another with all of the bad.

1.) Every game after Disgaea 2 in the series

Why did they take away the Master-Student skill learning mechanic in the later titles? Heck, Disgaea 3 is based on a classroom/school setting; I couldn't think of a better setting for that mechanic. I guess that it was taken out to deal away with some balancing issues with combat in order to prevent certain characters from being TOO powerful, but this is precisely why I love Disgaea 2: most of my main units could heal on the fly, Rozalin tripled as a Gunner, Mage, and Healer, my Fire Skull and Fire Mage knew all the magic skills, and I could actually beat the game with the story related characters (yes, even Tink) without breaking triple digits in the level department.

2.) Assassin's Creed 3

Why the F*** did they overhaul the combat system/button layout? Why do I constantly take so long to reload my own pistol? I had one in the Ezio Trilogy that didn't take an eternity to reload. Why were they so anal in being precise on the dodging and countering? If I didn't time it down to the nanosecond, the enemy would just be pushed away, or I would just get boned by this bulls***. Why couldn't I simply run away from a fight in the first half of the game? I'm serious, because I wasn't at a certain point in the game, every encounter that I came across with the enemy was unavoidable. I would run away, or try to only assassinate a particular target, but instead it would lock me into a fight that I didn't want any part of it. Then, all of a sudden, this is not longer and issue in the second half of the game. What!? Seriously, there's some kind of curse on all the odd numbered titles in this series (1, 3, Unity) that turn out to be far from great (although 1 was the first in the series, so it isn't a total lost), while the even titles are short of masterpieces (2, 4:Black Flag, Syndicate).

 

[Lufia Erim]

Destiny : The taken king.

Now i have no problem with RNG. I like the fact that in raids everyone gets their own loot. Ive played MMOs were in a team of 8 only 2 pieces of loot drop from a boss, so everyone has to roll on it. So everyone getting loot is a godsend. So in the old raids, the loot you got was random which is fine. But the thing is the loot you got was at the maximum level. In TTK however, not only do you have to hope the peice of gear drops, but the otem level VARIES. The maximum item level at the moment is 320, but loot in the hard raid drop anywhere from 310-320. So you can get the loot you want but it can also be at a item level LOWER than what you aready have. Makinf it basically useless. It is a double RNG from hell for the sake of it. Not to mention that there is a possibility of getting NOTHING. I mean this doesn't even look good on paper.

 

[09philj]

Everything to do with the controls and movement in Metal Gear Solid 2, especially with regard to shooting. There are better ways of creating challenge than just being hugely awkward. Getting up from prone, aiming, and then shooting is the most overly complex chain of actions I've ever come across in a game. The aiming is so sluggish as well.

 

[tippy2k2]

I don't think I'll ever understand the rationale behind making us meditate to drink potions in The Witcher 2. Not only does it make no sense from a design perspective (who is going to know when every difficult fight will start?), but it also makes no sense from a character-progression standpoint since Geralt was perfectly capable of drinking during combat throughout the first game!

That was one of the reasons I ended up putting the game down. I heard so much about how much strategy you had to put in and how it forces you to use potions well or else you'll get slaughtered. All I saw with the potion system was a "Let's move forward, find out what is over there that will kill me, reload the point and then use the potion so that I can now kill it". I have no way of knowing what I'm going to fight so how strategic can potion using really be unless I know exactly what I'm about to fight, in which case I suppose the strategy is going down there to die (which seems like poor strategy) or looking it up online (which feels like cheating strategy).

 

[MiskWisk]

Virtually the entire leveling system in FF 8. That thing was completely broken and I question the sanity of the designers, especially since it meshed with the story about as well as oil and water. It wouldn't have been so bad but every other story piece seemed to restrict which characters you could bring which usually resulted in the characters you hated/never used suddenly forced into your party. The enemies leveling with you completely killed the point of grinding for levels unless you felt like challenging the super boss and drawing magic was pretty much the only thing to do to actually progress. You then had the problem that you could completely break the difficulty by drawing if you decided to.

The whole thing was just bad idea on top of bad idea and the only times I have heard positive things about 8 were the card game and how hilariously overpowered you could get early on.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Dead Space 3:

Who thought that adding Co-op play

As shit as a lot of things in that game were I would happily stick up for the co-op gameplay. Now I'm probably in the minority there but I played it with a friend while we were both in contact over Skype and there was moments where my friend would be seeing shit that I couldn't because of that character he chose.

It was different enough that we played through it twice as each character just to see the differences. Fuck the rest of that game though. That 20 quid DLC that barely lasted an hour.....it still stings.

I can't argue that it wasn't good, but in context of being included in the game I dislike the change in tone it brought to the series. It's certainly much better than some other Co-op systems (RE:5 and RE:6), although I dislike those for much the same reason.

That horrible feeling that you're all alone, and there's nobody there to help you, that's what was lost in my opinion.

Although...

<spoiler=DLC Spoilers>In the DLC, they try to simulate that isolation when Carver starts going crazy, and fighting off imaginary things while Isaac has to hold off the actual monsters that decide to attack at that moment, creating a sudden isolation borne of delusion rather than of a physical nature, where neither of you can count on eachother at that moment to back the other up.

Since the co-op is completely optional I gave it a pass, though I still hate the fact that Carver had pretty much zero story and characterization unless you actually played the co-op. In fact, come to think of it if we were stuck with 2 protagonists they could have at least allowed us choose who to play as in single player so we could get a little replay value going.

I don't think it's the co-op or the micro-transactions that really killed the horror of DS3 at all, they both could have been just as scary as any other game. I'd say it has more to do with the fact that they were hardly even trying anymore to make Dead Space 3 an actual horror game. They threw out the hallucinations, did a terrible job with the atmosphere, made no attempt to build suspense, (THE most important thing when it comes to horror) and they used all of the exact same cheap tricks for jump scares and enemy spawns they did in the first couple games a hundred times, and not even the good ones (i.e. oh look, there's a vent, who wants to take bets that a necromorph will smash through it sometime in the next ten seconds?)

Honestly with that game it was pretty obvious they were half assing the game in just about every way possible just for a quick buck.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

Syndicate (the FPS reboot): I understand they were trying to give the game a futuristic, bright, neon feel, but the absolutely insane bloom effect was terrible, AND YOU COULDN'T ADJUST IT.

Warmachine: Tactics: They've said they're going to add it later, but for some odd-ball reason the designers decided to not allow you to save during missions. This wouldn't be that big of a deal, except that in literally every mission you'll have 4-5 different people/Warjacks that you have to keep alive, and if any of them die it's instant game over. When you play an hour long mission, and then on the last turn an enemy gets a lucky critical shot and kills one of your VIPs, it's chuck your computer out the window frustrating. And it's doubly frustrating because it's such a simple solution to fix.

 

[Hades]

The infamous ''skinship'' feature from Fire Emblem fates.

The gist of it is that the player character can call any unit to his room and pet them to raise their relationship. Its more then a bit creepy when quite a few of those characters are underage, some definitely not being any older then 12. It also makes your character look like quite the psychopath, calling his soldiers to his room one by one so he can touch them.

 

[FPLOON]

Virtua Quest:Making the C/Right stick control the grapple hook / making the L/L1/L2 buttons control the cameraIt should have been the other way around with the C/Right stick controlling the camera and the L/L1/L2 buttons controlling the grapple hook, especially when the grapple hook only goes in the direction the character's facing...A Level MechanicThe only thing it actively does is prevent me from doing certain sidequests and the rest is basically pointless because the game tells you when you're at the right level story-wise, anyway... Also, each "level" you do obtain does not effect any of your overall stats because that's based on both your upgrade tool build and your fighting type build...I explain it better <url=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.862513.21487363>here, but overall the game had some potential, but those "two" things were just bad ideas for this game in general...

 

[TristanBelmont]

So much of The Witcher 1 and 2 falls into this.