The section in Bioshock Infinite where you fight the ghost of Mrs Comstock. It didn't really fit the tone of the rest of the game, and most of the battle seemed to consist of desperately running around a graveyard looking for ammo, getting killed, getting resurrected and finding that Mrs Comstock's health has gone back up as well. And then when I finally beat her, she turns up again in a different area a few minutes later. And again after that.
Another "really great idea" I remembered right now would be from Risen 1: Pretty much the whole endgame. You start out with 3 different paths, either you use magic or specialize in one of the different weapons like swords or bows. At some point you have to collect the legendary armor of whats-his-name and while collecting it you might get suspicious because every part of the armor has "+X to hammer skill" on it. Lo and behold the armor comes with a huge hammer and shield and you HAVE to use it for the final boss fight. So you get forcibly transformed from a whimsical mage who grills everything from afar into Knight McHammer. Also the final bossfight suddenly has you dancing around in an arena where his attacks are telegraphed and parts of the floor randomly go missing which doesn't fit the rest of the combat in the game at all not to mention that you kill him in 3 or 5 hits regardless of your strength or anything. Also at some point you learn to break magical barriers and then have to visit each and every dungeon you went to before to open said barriers at the very end of said dungeons. I get that they wanted to pad the game out but holy hell it had been quite a while to get there so it wasn't really necessary.
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.
oh yeah, that was an awful part of that game. It was in Revelations. I tried it once and then stopped caring. Luckily if you max out the level of the assassin you assign there these events never happen, so its possible to disable them and still get the achievement for completing them apparently.
Since Ass Creed has been brought up, it would be wrong not to mention the silly "100% Sync" goals inserted into the missions since Brotherhood. Sure, you can clear the missions without doing them, but many of us suffer from completionism to some degree, and it's just infuriating to be docked for failing to "Upside down assassinate at least 3 guards using a coconut lasso" or some such shit. Or "Don't get snagged on an object during The Chase" when the whole series is notorious for you getting snagged on objects while chasing things. It's just padding the game using its most irritating flaws as an "extra challenge". Bonus points for the times the sync goals don't even show up on screen until you've failed them.
But...but...that's "replayability" see: MGS V for the latest version of that, where some of the hidden side objectives aren't even remotely possible the first time you play the mission because the gear simply doesn't exist yet.
Fallout 4. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to map "melee" and "throw grenade" together?
Fire Emblem Awakening. Who the hell thought it was a good idea for the game to pull out unpredictable enemy reinforcements AND have them move on the same turn?
Total War: Attila. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to have the tech tree replace bread-and-butter units (levy) with more expensive, specialized ones as you progress?
Europa Universalis 4. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to give non-Western nations such arbitrary means to westernize and, even after all that, still get inferior units irrespective of context?
We're making Dragon Age 2, we've got the beach, we've got the cave in the mountain and we've got the warehouse. That'll do, right? We don't need any more locations, the fans won't mind. The first game wasn't that big, after all...
Fire Emblem Awakening. Who the hell thought it was a good idea for the game to pull out unpredictable enemy reinforcements AND have them move on the same turn?
A-freaking-men to this one. Every time I bring it up, I feel like I played a different game because big fans state how it always tells you where and when it's going to happen.
No...no it does not. I know the game is supposed to be some sacred RPG but it's OK to say that your game has flaws and that's a gigantic freaking flaw that, in my ever so humble opinion, is a big reason why Awakening was one of the weakest Fire Emblem games I've played.
Fire Emblem Awakening. Who the hell thought it was a good idea for the game to pull out unpredictable enemy reinforcements AND have them move on the same turn?
A-freaking-men to this one. Every time I bring it up, I feel like I played a different game because big fans state how it always tells you where and when it's going to happen.
No...no it does not. I know the game is supposed to be some sacred RPG but it's OK to say that your game has flaws and that's a gigantic freaking flaw that, in my ever so humble opinion, is a big reason why Awakening was one of the weakest Fire Emblem games I've played.
I wouldn't say Awakening is considered a sacred game by any means. Most of the Fire Emblem fanbase seems to actively despise the game. Perhaps it worsened due to Fates taking a lot of new ideas and expanding on them in ways that are undesirable. Examples are the fanservice introduced there paving the way for the creepy skinship feature I mentioned, and taking over the children system without it tying into the plot, leaving the game with half a roster of kid units that are either ridiculously uninvolved in the plot or very close to being non canon....oh and without the time travel to justify it there is little room to deny that yes, 12 year old girls CAN now get pregnant and have children and yes, that woman in her late twenties CAN get pregnant from a shota aged kid. Also incest...loooots of incest though Fire Emblem isn't particularly unfamiliar with that one.
Huh...maybe it's just been my luck or maybe it's just a confirmation bias thing cause all I ever seem to hear about Awakening is that it's a must have for the 3DS and FE fans.
It is nice to know I'm not the only one who thought it wasn't all that good
Huh...maybe it's just been my luck or maybe it's just a confirmation bias thing cause all I ever seem to hear about Awakening is that it's a must have for the 3DS and FE fans.
It is nice to know I'm not the only one who thought it wasn't all that good
People who played Awakening as their first Fire emblem seems to like it the most while the ones who played its predecessor are seeing the series take one step back and one step forward into anime fanservice territory.
I'm personally somewhere in the middle of it. I think Awakening is a good game in its own right but worse then many other Fire Emblems. It tried some new things, some of which worked and others fell flat. The story was somewhat crap but the characters likable, if to comfortable in their archtypes.
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.
Then you didn't play Disgaea D2? That system is back, and made in such a way that you can end up with a big loop of masters and apprentices so that everyone can learn everything (it even allows you to get the weapon skills early).
not a game i play personally but have to put up with it.. "fishing planet" a relative plays it and a very loud screeching bird noise plays on one of the maps every 10 seconds :-| i want that entire species to go extinct now
I've ranted about the Runey system in enough threads already, but here's the skinny.
Why would anyone, in a farming/dungeon crawler hybrid that spun off from harvest moon, insert a time-consuming mechanic where you have to babysit this stupid food chain and micromanage it with shitty tools and require a detour just to see how the food chain is behaving, and then punish the player with not being able to grow a goddamn thing if they let the food chain fail, while also making it so that if they game the system to make it less tedious, you reward them by making their crops grow so fast it breaks the game?
WHY?!? It ruined an otherwise perfect game for me! ;_;
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Shadow the hedgehog
Why are vehicles so slow and worthless? At least let me vault off my bike like in the intro and watch it blow up whatever it hits!
Why is the dialogue and plot so worthless?! Why are the swear words totally unnatural?! WHY?!
Why are melee weapons so worthless? Why do they have like 6 hits of durability, hit so slow, do so little damage (outside of the unlockable katana) and why can't I swing them while running/skating which would give them some utility?
There was a good game in here, but so many questionable decisions render it a severely handicapped game.
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Of orcs and men
Ok, I love this game, the story, the upgrade mechanics, and the many design questions is brings up.
But why the hell would you design the game in a way that makes it very beneficial to customize the Orc into a tank and the Goblin a total glass cannon, make the whole game about using the two of them in combat to combo together, and then give us a fight where we only have control over the goblin, against 2 tough melee enemies and a mage who can potentially force-choke us from across the room for a quarter of our health while stunning us, while the other two guys gut us while we're stunned by the spell?!
And WHY would your final boss not only involve an overpowered mage guy who can force choke HALF THE TANK'S HP, and then also throw in endlessly respawning tanky enemies to deal with?!
If you drop down to Easy Mode, the final battle is doable enough. But doing it on Medium is ridiculous.
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Styx Master of Shadows: *being vague about it so not to spoil it*
Would someone explain to me how it's possible to make an absolutely FANTASTIC stealth game about using your environment to the fullest in order to gain an advantage, and then completely screw up everything that makes the formula work during the final boss? ESPECIALLY when you already had an epic confrontation with the same villain earlier in the game that only failed to stick due to plot reasons?
Seriously, the first encounter with the ultimate villain is awesome. You stalk them around an area they know very well, and try to ambush them, with them being able to predict each of your attacks, and thus evade death. And you can't afford to get caught since they'll kick your ass in straight combat. It's an amazing cat-and-mouse segment using shadows, hidey-holes in the walls and wooden support beams up on the ceiling to gank from as you try to wear them down until they make a mistake.
The final boss? Welp, one small circular arena with 3 small pieces of cover to hide in, with 3 patrolling weaklings that patrol RANDOMLY, so it's impossible to gank more than one before they all swarm you and murder you horribly, since getting caught and forced to fight when more than 1 enemy is attacking you is a death sentence. Oh, and you are probably completely out of health potions, Amber/Mana potions (ruling out most abilities during this fight) and throwing knives because the previous segment of the game (which was awesome, BTW) is insanely hard and will require you to use all of your resources to get through alive.
And that 1 v 3 arena that ends the game? You have to repeat it 3 times to end the game, and the last round has enemies that can turn invisible. -_-
Aside from that one single gripe, the game was incredible. I still recommend the hell out of it if you like stealth games, but if the final encounter frustrates you, just look up the ending on youtube and don't feel bad. It really does not belong in that game.
Give us another epic cat-and-mouse game with the villain in a complex multi-layered arena. Make us try to beat them to the object they so desperately wanted while evading the hardest enemy type in the game, and trying to make THEM get caught instead of you. Something like that would TOTALLY have suited the game more than what we got.
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Metroid other M
I don't think I need to say much here. Stupid control scheme and completely going against EVERYTHING we know about Samus to turn her into a weak-willed wuss who suddenly loves taking orders and is too stupid to ASK for authorization for something like the anti-heat shields when in a VOLCANIC AREA that's killing her? That's bordering on Franchise sabotage!
Thought I was gonna be the first one to say that. "Ugh, a radroach, I'm not wasting ammo on that, I'll just squish it with a melee attack. Oh, shit, I held LAlt a quarter-second too long and now I'm on fire (or blew my own legs off)." Doesn't help that the key sticks when I try to whack it with my thumb or ring finger without taking my hand off WASD, and I can't be bothered to map it to a mouse button. Just waiting for the mod toolkit to release so somebody can split that binding (which you literally cannot do, in one of the ugliest examples of lazy porting from consoles that I've ever seen).
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).
I haven't read a whole ton yet (about halfway through the first book), but I'm pretty sure this has more to do with the books, and how geralt prepares before a fight (you study monsters and figure out what you're dealing with before heading in, that's what witchers typically try to do) so the whole sit down and meditate with potions bit has more to do with the book source than any gameplay features...at least I think.
they got rid of that in the third game though, so if that's what was putting you off then feel free to play that one.
OT:
since I just got done playing it, fallout 4, whoever thought having melee/bash be the same fucking keybind as grenade throw needs to get slapped in the face, not to mention having the fucking "alt" key of all things as bash?!? are you shitting me? there are tons of keys closer/better ergonomically designed in a moment of panic to hit then that piece of shit.
I haven't read a whole ton yet (about halfway through the first book), but I'm pretty sure this has more to do with the books, and how geralt prepares before a fight (you study monsters and figure out what you're dealing with before heading in, that's what witchers typically try to do) so the whole sit down and meditate with potions bit has more to do with the book source than any gameplay features...at least I think.
they got rid of that in the third game though, so if that's what was putting you off then feel free to play that one.
I have read the books (or at least the ones released in English, which is 4 if you count the short story one) and you are correct. He has to meditate in order to be able to handle the strain put on his body if I remember correctly.
As to Witcher 3, I do intend to jump into it as I've heard most of what I hated about Witcher 2 (a "What the fuck is everyone talking about?" story and gameplay stuff like the potions) has been taken away.
knowing that you read the books now, I'm really surprised to hear someone say this, I'll admit the 2nd game isn't the *easiest* of stories to jump into, but not having read the books and only played the first game I felt fine following it, albeit you had to pay attention to certain bits and read between the lines sometimes.
in its favor, the witcher 3 certainly does a better job I think of presenting an overall macro view of the world, so you aren't.."lost" on what the story is going on about.
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