Things you hate about Fic...VIDEO GAMES!

[Doc ock rokc]

Inspired by the wonderful book thread this is the thread where we can all complan about the problems in video games. one of the topics i would like to bring up is ...

THE Achilles' heel glitch!

what is this you ask. its the glitch in a videogame where shots to the foot are lethal or when in a game someone "oneshot"s you in the foot. this glitch gets me all the time and it really annoys the hell out of me
next is

Weapon balance

Or more likely the lack of weapon balance in some games. Example Halo...
halo is the example of non weapon balance for there are weapons that can easily be called "Powerweapons" power weapons are weapons that have a small considerable humongous GINORMOUS! advantage over the normal ones (example shot gun vs plasma pistol shot gun is a instagib while plasma pistol just brakes the shield of the enemy making them have a split second to react before you punch them which i might add is enough to throw a plasma grenade)

....please show us your opinion and/or tell us the problems you find in a game's Story/gameplay/system/whatever

[EVILNess]

In a single player game balance should never be an issue, even though it is. Example, FFT is probably the most unbalanced game ever. EVER.

However, a multiplayer game has subjective balance. Example, I play a Druid in WoW. Everyone tells me I am over-powered and brokenly so. I however do not see it as I happen to be feral specced, in a class that sees more nerf than a foam factory.

So its all subjective, we all cry for balance, but secretly everyone just wants the imbalance to be in their favor.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Piss poor stories. Hire a good writer damn it!

[Satan's Onion]

See this link here? Pay special attention to points 1, 4*, 5, 6, 10, 13, 14, 15.

*especially #4.

Also, obligatory fucking romance. Stop it. Unless there's some federal law about it of which I wasn't aware, your characters do not need to be paired off romantically by the end of the game. It's a sad indictment of the storytelling in even the best videogames that I can tell, more or less immediately, who's going to end up in Twoo Wuv with each other by the game's end.

[Savage Thinking]

The thing that gets me is wonky camera angles, and your inability to control them (or even when it's really limited). Prince of Persia, Mario Galaxy, and Tomb Raider have done this. It's like the game developers try to make the game much more difficult by having extremely awkard camera angles, stupidly hindering the player by fucking up their perspective and more often than not, leading them to their untimely death.

Also, when you're in the middle of doing something really important (for exmaple, jumping from platform to platform or something) and when you're in the middle of it, the camera unexpectedly shifts throwing the player completely off guard making them adjust quickly or die.

And one other thing about camera angles. Which is when the camera forces you to be moving in the weirdest way. The best example I can think of is the Platform Peril minigame in the first Mario Party. When I first was going to play this mini game, I was all 'Hey, this is gonna be cool', and once it starts, I think 'Hey, moving my joystick up will make him go forward, right?' Wrong. I end up looking like a jackass falling off the platform in the first 3 seconds of the mini game....

[h4x.m4g3]

Originally Posted by EVILNess

However, a multiplayer game has subjective balance. Example, I play a Druid in WoW. Everyone tells me I am over-powered and brokenly so. I however do not see it as I happen to be feral specced, in a class that sees more nerf than a foam factory.

Try being a a warlock, every patch their is a new fear resistance/break/immunity or they decide fear needs to break after 3 seconds or some shit, and everyday someone complains that warlocks are overpowered and need to be nerfed. Yes the balance issue in many games is mostly subjective, except for those damn stun-locking rogues.

Personally I hate the obvious twist. I mean sure there will/should always be a hint at what's going on, but I shouldn't know the exact plot outline of the remainder of the game after the first dungeon/level. Also even worse is the completely stupid 20 billion plot twist that don't make sense, aren't even remotely hinted at but pop up every 5 minutes (I'm looking at you Final Fantasy 8).

I hate game breaking/instant-death glitches because they always cause me to momentarily hate the game and have to turn it off. For example I was playing GTA4 the other day, when I run over some guys and jump out of my car to start shooting at the remaining ones. When all of a sudden I start infinitely looping through the normal standing, getting shot, and drawing a weapon. Unable to move, duck, dodge, shoot or do anything until I die.

Edit for above: Dear god #4 my hunter has more protective covering in leather then my tank in full mail.

[Arhra]

I hate it when games like console RPG's do things in the game system when they really should have tried for cutscenes.

It was one of the two things that annoyed me about Tales of Symphonia. The cutscenes they did have were great, but there was only two in the entire game and there were things that were a bit disappointing to see using the standard game engine. (Ozette, I'm looking at you. You know why.)

Of course, they can be done effectively - Legend of Dragoon managed it quite effectively, but there's really times when its nice to see the designers splurge for something a little more special.

The other problem with Tales of Symphonia was dialogue. Some of it was very clunky ("In other words, you mean REPEAT OF THE THING ANOTHER CHARACTER JUST SAID").

[mauve]

What annoys me:

"Well Link, you need to get to the top of the mountain to get the key to the door to the room with the map to the island where the master sword is."

"Oh, sorry Link-- You need the Deku Leaf to fly up that mountain. Go talk to the Deku Tree."

"Whoops, my bad, Link. You need the Bow to shoot down that random object before you can get to the Deku Tree. No, your boomerang and your slingshot, which you haven't needed to use AT ALL since you got them, won't work."

"Hey Link, you need to mow this random dude's lawn before you can get the key to the temple where you'll randomly find a bow. No, don't be silly- you can't BUY A BOW from a weapons store."

"Hmm, looks like you'll need to chase that guy's cows out of the field before you can mow the lawn to get the key to enter the temple to find the bow to shoot the thing to talk to the tree to get the leaf to fly to the mountain to find the door to get the map to find the Master Sword to get to Gannondorf and... aw hell, why were we doing this again??"

[Archbio]

While we're on on the topic of Legend of Zelda, I really hate games that are non-sequels; it's a series, but everything moves sideways, not forward. I guess that's sort of a sliding scale, but Zelda's kind of as bad as one can go while still pretend to have a storyline and without toppling into Final Fantasy territory.

Honestly, how many Links has there been? One is enough!

[Amake]

Continuity is overrated. I think of each Zelda as a Street Fighter 2 version, not a part in an ongoing narrative.

Things I hate in games is realistic graphics. First of all, we don't need more brown, grey and black color schemes. Secondly, you've got too many details. In the real world you normally get sensory overload when you walk down a street in Tokyo; in a game you're frequently running down the street in Neo-Tokyo carving up whores with dual chainsaws while fifty spaceships and tanks are shooting at you and you're supposed to hunt down a maniac in a car and listen to radio instructions and save the free world at the same time. It doesn't help when you add motion blur, adrenaline fog, breath fog on the inside of your visor and freaking lens flares too.

I maintain that SNES was the height of gaming technology, at least until they figure out how to use all that graphic power to do something useful.