"Wanky Things In Wonderful Games" or "God Damned 100% Completion Rate"

[Seil]

Now, like all of us, I appreciate a good wank. Not, however, when it's in my games. I mean, we've got brilliant games like Psychonauts, Silent Hill and Thief! Yet all of them are marred by one or two flaws.

Now don't get me wrong, Thief 1, Silent Hill 1 and Psychonauts are all great, wonderful, fantastic and rad... But there's just something that keeps them from perfection. In Silent Hill 1, it's the control scheme. I downloaded Silent Hill 1 over the PSN, after playing (and buying) nearly all the other games in the series, and all of them had 3D control. SH1, however, did not. It is extremely difficult to run away from the monsters when you can't actually run.

Thief 1 had that fetch quest mission for a ghost. I know that most games have a fetch quest hidden somewhere in them, but this was frustrating to me as it's on a trademark Thief huge map, with strong enemies in linear corridors that you couldn't really sneak by.

Psychonauts had the collectibles. I recently bought Psychonauts from Steam - my PS2 is dying on me - and it's every bit as great as I remember it... And just as frustrating. You've got several 'levels,' what with several collectibles, numbering in the hundreds for each level. From emotional baggage to figments to cobwebs to whatever - and if you're going for one hundred percent, and you're missing one figment, you've gotta go through the entire level. (And it's a figment! A semi-transparent scribble that in levels like Mias and Edgars are nearly impossible to see!)

These don't make the game horrible. The games are nothing short of brilliant. But they are very wanky bits. And sometimes I don't enjoy being jerked around.

[Mr.Bookworm]

Shadows of the Colossus is still the most beautiful game ever made, in so many ways.

It also has a terrible fucking camera that allows me to admire the breathtaking scenery while a giant monster is trying to smash my face in with it's skyscraper sword.

Oh yeah, and it lags like hell in certain parts.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

The important lesson we learnt in this thread: Seil uses his game as masturbation material.

[Mr.Bookworm]

Oh you wacky Brits.

[Marc v4.0]

Brit? I thought Smarty was some sort of drunken euro-potato

[Seil]

Outer space potato man. (http://outerspacepotatoman.ytmnd.com/) He's a Scot, so he's probably a drunk man in a kilt.

[Mr.Bookworm]

Potato, potatoh.

[Ecks]

While we're on the subject... Re:coded and to a lesser extent, playing any KH game on an easier difficulty than Proud.

Why the HELL do I have to complete the damn journal? I'd rather deal with the higher difficulty (and usually do). If KH1 wasn't so damn nintendo hard due to the controls not being as tight as they are in later iterations, I could probably actually go back and do KH1 on proud.

[Revising Ocelot]

You want a horrible collectathon, try Donkey Kong 64. It was barely tolerable back in it's day when that style was relatively new-fangled, now it's just incredibly tedious.

[akaSM]

You want a horrible collectathon, try Donkey Kong 64. It was barely back in it's day when that style was relatively new-fangled, now it's just incredibly tedious.

Come on, DK64 only had:

201 golden bananas
40 banana medals
8 boss keys
2 special coins
20 fairies
10 crowns
40 blueprints
100 Bananas per level PER character (2500 IIRC)

Umm...ok those are a lot of items but...the game is quite fun :3

[Nique]

If KH1 wasn't so damn nintendo hard due to the controls not being as tight as they are in later iterations, I could probably actually go back and do KH1 on proud.

Man Ecks I dunno, I didn't think proud mode was that bad in Kingdom Hearts. Like, reasonably hard? Engaging, maybe?

[Kim]

Oh yeah KH1 is easy as fuck if you level proper. I mean, set the leveling so it's fast up until level 60 because goddamn who the fuck needs to level past sixty.

[Nikose Tyris]

Halo Reach.

Fuck you for punishing me for having an Xbox Live Gold Account. I play system link with my friends and get no credits whatsoever. In order to rank up I apparently have no choice but to play matchmaking games with random strangers online, something I absolutely fucking detest.

Thanks for making me regret the purchase of this otherwise enjoyable game, Bungie. Glad to see that you're always finding new ways to disappoint me.

[Seil]

Pfffft, Psychonauts has, like, 150 figments per section per mind. Also you have to find money to buy a dowsing rod to find you more money to buy X so you can collect Y and Z.

[Marc v4.0]

Halo Reach.

Fuck you for punishing me for having an Xbox Live Gold Account. I play system link with my friends and get no credits whatsoever. In order to rank up I apparently have no choice but to play matchmaking games with random strangers online, something I absolutely fucking detest.

Thanks for making me regret the purchase of this otherwise enjoyable game, Bungie. Glad to see that you're always finding new ways to disappoint me.

You and your buddies can fight against the random people online.

[Kerensky287]

I play system link with my friends and get no credits whatsoever. In order to rank up I apparently have no choice but to play matchmaking games with random strangers online, something I absolutely fucking detest.

Thanks for making me regret the purchase of this otherwise enjoyable game, Bungie. Glad to see that you're always finding new ways to disappoint me.

:raise:

"Fuck, I can't get any points to buy aesthetic gear for my virtual character that I can't actually see until I die, because they don't give me those completely optional points in the game mode I have so much fun playing with friends.

I regret buying this game because I cannot get optional, useless gear at the same time as having fun with friends."


I hate Gears of War's shitty AI. No, Dom. You cannot hope to chainsaw the dude on that Troika from where you are. Don't even fucking try. No, Dom - DOM - FUCK. God-fucking-dammit Dom. Just... just sit the fuck down there, wait for a minute no DOM DOM FUCK *GAME OVER*

[Azisien]

Halo Reach.

Fuck you for punishing me for having an Xbox Live Gold Account. I play system link with my friends and get no credits whatsoever. In order to rank up I apparently have no choice but to play matchmaking games with random strangers online, something I absolutely fucking detest.

Thanks for making me regret the purchase of this otherwise enjoyable game, Bungie. Glad to see that you're always finding new ways to disappoint me.

I'm pretty sure almost all games do this. It's a balancing measure so you don't, say, have your friends idle locally and let you rank up and get whatever perks/cred go with that. Sounds petty, but gamers will totally do it.

[Nikose Tyris]

See if you don't have a gold account, you don't have this issue at all- it completely changes your credit rate to buy said 'arbitrary gear' and completely fucks up my goal of buying all of said gear.

Edit: read as "I made about 1100 credits in that giant 2 hour firefight, that was pretty enjoyable." into "What the fuck why am I only making 50 credits for 'participation'?"

Edit2: I should also point out part of the reason I'm so pissed is that it also controls my title, and I would really appreciate not being a god damn Recruit when I've been playing longer then my apparently "Sargeant" roommate who doesn't have a gold account.

[Fenris]

I'm pretty sure almost all games do this. It's a balancing measure so you don't, say, have your friends idle locally and let you rank up and get whatever perks/cred go with that. Sounds petty, but gamers will totally do it.

Everybody besides Azisien: This is how you reply to posts like Nikose's.

Azisien: Continue making excellent posts.

[Marc v4.0]

Everybody besides Azisien: This is how you reply to posts like Nikose's.

It has been clearly established that I reply to all posts with face-smacking dicks shooting out of my mouth, my good man.

[Ecks]

Man Ecks I dunno, I didn't think proud mode was that bad in Kingdom Hearts. Like, reasonably hard? Engaging, maybe?

Might just be because I never do anything but the minimal level grinding on my first playthroughs.

[Doc ock rokc]

Shadows of the Colossus is still the most beautiful game ever made, in so many ways.

It also has a terrible fucking camera that allows me to admire the breathtaking scenery while a giant monster is trying to smash my face in with it's skyscraper sword.

Oh yeah, and it lags like hell in certain parts.

God when i rented the HD version the other day i nearly died from the beauty...of a Skyscraper sword hitting me.

[mauve]

Final Fantasy 12's Gambit system. Don't get me wrong-- Gambits were cool as far as customizing your characters' fighting styles and elliminating tedious menu navigation every blessed time someone needed to attack or be healed. Being able to set characters to automatically revive a KO'd character was super helpful. But sometimes the fact that you had to constantly micromanage the order of their gambits to keep them from doing mind-numbingly stupid things got annoying. I usually had my party set to either attack what the leader was attacking or attack the nearest target. This means that even if AI-controlled-Basch was set as my sword-weilding tank while I picked off enemies from a distance with a gun, eventually I'd turn around to see Basch swinging a sword uselessly at a flying enemy (only magic and ranged weapons can hit flying targets in ff12) because it was slightly closer to him than the GIANT DRAGON CURRENTLY MOPPING THE FLOOR WITH ME. Then I'd have to stop what I'm doing to rearrange his gambit priorities to ignore the birds even though Leader-Balthier is shooting them. Then as soon as I left that area ran into new monsters or changed leaders I'd have to go through the whole gambit reshuffling process again.

And it was also annoying that you could only get new gambit abilities in stores or find them in treasure chests. If I hadn't found or bought the "don't attack flying targets" before visiting the highlands outside of the pirate city, I would have been in deep trouble.

[Nique]

Gambits were cool as far as customizing your characters' fighting styles and elliminating tedious menu navigation every blessed time someone needed to attack or be healed. Being able to set characters to automatically revive a KO'd character was super helpful. But sometimes the fact that you had to constantly micromanage the order of their gambits to keep them from doing mind-numbingly stupid things got annoying.

I always felt like I was doing something wrong becuase the AI felt more like Kingdom Hearts' Donald and Goofy only with an extra 1-2 party members to screw you over in a crucial moment.

[Meister]

Gambits: totally sweet idea.
Setting things up so you gain new gambits over the course of the game, have to buy them in a shop, and especially don't get one of the most basic Final Fantasy if-then conditions (using elemental magic against elemental-vulnerable enemies) until way late in the game: what were you thinking for the love of god.

oh and while we're talking about FF12, including Vaan and Penelo, at all.

[Kim]

Eh, neither Vaan nor Penelo actively detracted from the game in any meaningful way. The general complaint seems to be that they didn't matter, in which case "oh no characters who didn't matter were present this is wholly unprecedented for a Final Fantasy game except it isn't." Penelo should have been replaced with Larsa, but that's not a problem with Penelo so much as it's a problem that Larsa didn't become a full-time member.

[Krylo]

I actually like the way Vaan and Penelo were implemented though. Like, no one even pretended they mattered. Balthier and Ashe and Basche would be SRS FACING at each other over here, and off to the side Vaan and Penelo would be flirting and chasing each other around like doofuses.

[IHateMakingNames]

At least they had gambits in FF12. I don't know why Square went backwards and made your party members uncontrollable in FF13. I just want Vanille to cast one fucking spell but she has to go through four others first because the game thinks it's more important to cast those. The game is also retarded with collectibles. Upgrading every weapon in the game is the most tedious of tasks I've seen in a game in a long time. Square really learned something from FF11 and MMORPGs it seems.

[Arcanum]

Pure Bladestone in Demon's Souls. It drops from one type of enemy in the game, with a 1/200 drop rate. I've heard stories of people running the farming route for days before getting it, while luckier folk have gotten it in a few hours. But still, that's 3+ hours spent running a 2 minute route to kill a single enemy.

[Aldurin]

Sly 3 would only let you play as the main three characters out-of-mission, regardless of how badass the other characters would. So what if the Guru isn't stealthy? He can just ride a flashlight guard and have a hell of a time smashing his way through the entire area. And the Panda King being slow and fat doesn't change the fact that whatever tries to kill him will have a face full of fireworks. And screenshots for Sly 4 indicate that this will remain the same case.

The only problem with Jak 3 (which I personally believe is the best PS2 game ever) was the uni-directional pacman-esque minigame you had to beat in order to continue the story. That shit held me up forever on my first playthrough.

None of the Ratchet and Clank games after the second one had the truly classic feel that Going Commando had.

In regards of 100% completion topic, I have beat all 3 of these games multiple times (Jak 3 the most because it is as fun as hell whether you start a new game with everything or nothing).

[mauve]

Kingdom Hearts' Donald and Goofy Urg, I forgot about those two. Donald and Goofy were complete morons in combat. ESPECIALLY if you thought you could trust them to hold on to potions and ethers and the like. It drove me crazy how they'd waste healing items on EACH OTHER, despite the fact that THEY CAN COME BACK FROM THE DEAD while THE FATE OF THE UNIVERSE DEPENDS ON SORA NOT DYING AT ALL. This was particularly problematic in the early stages of the game, when you had low max HP and not a lot of health items to spare. By the time you were near death, Donald and Goofy had wasted all their items on each other and you didn't really have the few seconds necessary for Sora's "taking stuff out of my inventory" animation to complete itself.

Once you get the "STOP HEALING EACH OTHER AND FOCUS ON ME, STUPID," battle order thing, this problem solved itself, but by then you generally are powerful enough to take on anything anyway.

[Seil]

Hey, hey Meat Circus: FUCK YOU!

[Nique]

ESPECIALLY if you thought you could trust them to hold on to potions and ethers and the like

This may have been the worst part.

My precious ethers... I'm not made of Munny!

[Satan's Onion]

So, Golden Sun. I recently got a copy of GS: Dark Dawn and I find the most annoying thing is when I get to the end of a game and I find that I'm lacking just one goddamned thing (a Djiinn, a summon, whatever) that I could only have gotten by poking one particular pixel in Isaac's house at the very beginning of the game and you can't go back and get it because those arbitrary walls to completion cause a tiny spark of spite to warm a programmer's cold, dead heart.

Of course, right after that I bought Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, so maybe I'm just a glutton for punishment.

[walkertexasdruid]

Vangrant Story is one of my favorite games of all time. However, it is nearly impossible to get a 100% completion. There is the magic forest, where all of the areas connect other areas that are nowhere near each other, and the Iron Maiden, which is an even more confusing labyrinth. Also you have to beat the game once before the whole map is opened up to you (the final boss is pretty hard to defeat by the way). Still, like I said I love the game.