Stupid concepts in video games

Cafe Society
1

“Al Bhed Primers” in Final Fantasy X and X-2. Nobody learns a language one letter at a time! Why not have them learn all the words starting with A then B and so on?

Assembling weapons from materials found while fighting monsters. In Final Fantasy 8 I never did find all the materials I needed to make all of the best weapons for all of the characters. In Final Fantasy X they don’t let you dissassemble unused weapons/ armor to make better armor/ weapons.

Side quests so long you nearly forget the main story. Final Fantasy 8, Final Fantasy Ten and Arc the Lad were especially bad about this.

Nearly imposssible mini games you have to beat to get best weapons. Final Fantasy X was the worst, again. Three hours of dodging lighting bolts just to get Lulu’s best weapon? I don’t think so.

You can’t get there from here. Several games have final dungeons you can’t get out of.

RPG where you can’t level up your character by fighting monsters. I can’t remember the name of the game but the only way to level up was by fighting boss battles and since there were only so many bosses in the game you could only level up so mich. I never did beat the final boss because he was so powerfull.

Games where the final Boss is either too tough or too easy.

Action RPG’s were you can’t jump caticorner without falling off the platform. I can’t remember the name of the game but it took me three hours to figure out a method to jump caticorner without falling off the platform. Luckily you don’t have to worry about that in these new 3-d games.

Timed jumping puzzles. Tomb Raider was the worst of these.

Hard to shoot and run at the same time. Resident Evil.

Character slows way down when fighting monsters. Kings Field, Eternal Darkness.

Have to push button to run. Can I sue video game companies for getting carpal tunnel syndrome?

Have to push button to lock onto enemies. I nearly broke my finger playing Metroid Prime.

RPG’s with long deep dungeons where you can’t save. Arc the Lad and Wild Arms III were the worst. Why do they do this?

2

Save points. A stupid and out-moded concept that should have been done away with long ago, but is kept around because it allows the game companies to advertise that their game has “forty hours of gameplay” when they know very well that thirty-eight of those hours will be spent re-playing the same damn levels over and over until you can get through without croaking.

3

My Dad just gave me his laptop. I’ve had Alone In The Dark:The New Nightmare for a year (It was down to $10), but haven’t had a computer capable of running it until now.

The first three games allowed you to save whenever you wanted, as much as you wanted.

NN requires you to find a Charm Of Saving. Each medalion allows you IIRC four saves. But you can only ever have four save slots. This means overwriting saves and possibly ending up having to restart from the begeegining because none of the saves you have are before you made the screw up which makes it impossible to win.
And you can’t save any actions in the room you’re in. EG You Finally manage to kill the monsters in the library and get the crystal doodad of the dark gods. You save the game. On restoring that file, you’re in the library but the monsters are still alive and you’re sans doodad.

It doesn’t help that I have OCD. I keep doing rooms over until I can get through without getting hit once. With the previous AITDs, I would just save every few seconds and restore when injured. With NN, I have to make it through the whole room uninjured.

4

Sorry furryman, but I love sidequests and collectables. I reckon choice is a good thing, but horses for courses [shrugs].

I have a pet hate of game that spring impossibly difficult traps on you, and bascially force you to save/reload so you can prepare yourself properly. Mainly stems from bad game design. Same thing with allowing the user to create a bad character designin a RPG that makes it impossible to complete it (Final Fantasy X and, to a lesser extent, Dark Cloud 2). A well designed games should allow all characters to succeed, prime examples are Deus Ex and Fallout 1&2.

Save points can be annoying, but it depends. Duke Nuke 'Em didn’t have mid-level savepoints, but generally the levels were short and easy enough - quicksaves would had made it too easy. I guess having limited savegames (Max Payne?) would be a good compromise.

My all time stupid concept of a videogame is a game that’s solely relying on brand recognition to sell it, dispite it being a shoddly piece of work. See: Tomb Raider 2&3, the Everquest RTS, ST:Armarda, Terminator 3, Enter the Matrix, and 95% of other movie tie-ins…

5

Games that have a “gimmick” level whose only challenge and difficulty lies in its being totally unrelated to what the game engine is designed for.

“After the your success at the battle of Arbo-Tesla, the power plant in your Ten-story Battle Mech is depleted. You must survive the two weeks outside the Mech until the drop-ship returns by catching at least twelve dogfish a day, using an improvised flycasting rod.”

Sorry, I know those “dogfish” are just reskinned and randomly spawned heat-seeking missiles tweaked to adhere to my grappling hoo- err, fishing line for a random length of time before removing themselves at speed to distance, and simply turning off the HUD, engine and footstep sound effects, and most of the controls does not a “Mech Pilot on the ground” make. This isn’t fun. Next level, please.

6

You know, that’s not really a concept so much as just something you don’t like. :slight_smile:

I think I play different kinds of games than most people in this thread… but…

Points in platform games! The only reason Super Mario Bros. has points was they hadn’t figured out yet that it wasn’t a pinball game. Fine, but they still had them as late as Super Mario World. The same with timed levels. Unless it’s actually challenging to get through the level in the time limit, the only purpose of it is to get more points. SMB2 lacked both these things, though, which was cool.

7

My little peeve is The Illusion of Choice.

Let’s say you’re toodling your way through a role-playing game. There you are, big badass warrior, been beating up bunnies for several levels now so that your party is as kickass as is conceivable. Levels amassed, you decide to go wander to the Neighborhood of Cutscenes, so as to get with the plot.

The plot dictates that you must fight the Big Badass Villain, or he will take the Valuable Doodad from you! Oh, no!

But you and your trusty ragtag band of buttkickers are ready. This is the day you’ve prepared for; this is your destiny. This is why all those bunnies, rats, snakes, birds and bats bit the dust: so that you might triumph over Badness.

And you do! You wipe up the floor with that Villainous guy. You load up your biggest, nastiest special effects, you team up your characters just right, you anticipate said Badass’ every move, you murderize him.

And then, he takes your Valuable Doodad anyway.

ger…huh? What? We killed you! We knocked the crap out of you! If you were any more beat-down, you’d be turning tricks in Newark, and not in the nice parts. You’re toast, history, bar-b-q. Historical toasted bar-b-q.

And yet, the Valuable Doodad is gone.

Why fight, at that point? Why do anything? Why keep playing the stupid game?

Why give me the illusion that I could affect the outcome of this game to start with?

Stupid predestination.

8

That the video designers can keep making them shorter without charging less.

It costs me the same amount of money to buy Knights of the Old Republic, which takes around 50 hours to finish, as it costs to buy Max Payne 2, which takes around 7 hours to finish. Guess which one I bought and guess which one I borrowed from a friend?

And don’t get me started on mods “extending the life of a game.” It happened ONCE, with Half-life. Now every game that comes out is released with a software developement kit. A few people start half-assed mods, get bored, don’t finish them and by that time game 2: even prettier graphics is out anyway.

Okay, okay, game problems: shitty endings. You spend x hours learning about the characters you’re playing (or interacting with) and after you beat the end boss, instead of an epilogue of “what happened after the game” you get the credits. Or worse, it’s left for a sequel that doesn’t get made (I’m looking at Clive Barker’s Undying here…).

9

Impossible sidequests for certain objects are pretty annoying. The Japanese appear to love this. Perhaps that problem with Japan’s economy is that 15% of their best and brightest are locked in their rooms trying to get 100% on Ocarina of Time. Although I guess I can handle it since every so often sit down and do that myself.

I guess my addition would be freakishly slow game play. Final Fantasy Tactics was filled with little, identical battles (especially if you’re trying to get most objects) which all last about half an hour. This was the only game that I ever thought was going to give me a heart attack it got so freaking frustrating. Especially when I saw that I was basically guaranteed to lose a battle yet it was going to take me another 10 minutes to actually lose so I have to get up, take out the mem card and reboot it.

Another from FF Tactics is when you’re playing a level where your victory depends on an A.I. Like you have to save this guy from those enemies. And half the time the enemy moves first and the guy you have to save closes with them and kills himself before you ever move. And the other half you move first yet part of the time the A.U. closes with the enemies and kills himself before you have a chance to save him. You should never ever have your only chance of progression depending on an idiotic A.I. I cursed like I’ve never cursed before.

10

Impossible sidequests for certain objects are pretty annoying. The Japanese appear to love this. Perhaps that problem with Japan’s economy is that 15% of their best and brightest are locked in their rooms trying to get 100% on Ocarina of Time. Although I guess I can handle it since every so often sit down and do that myself.

I guess my addition would be freakishly slow game play. Final Fantasy Tactics was filled with little, identical battles (especially if you’re trying to get most objects) which all last about half an hour. This was the only game that I ever thought was going to give me a heart attack it got so freaking frustrating. Especially when I saw that I was basically guaranteed to lose a battle yet it was going to take me another 10 minutes to actually lose so I have to get up, take out the mem card and reboot it.

Another from FF Tactics is when you’re playing a level where your victory depends on an A.I. Like you have to save this guy from those enemies. And half the time the enemy moves first and the guy you have to save closes with them and kills himself before you ever move. And the other half you move first yet part of the time the A.U. closes with the enemies and kills himself before you have a chance to save him. You should never ever have your only chance of progression depending on an idiotic A.I. I cursed like I’ve never cursed before. I’m still pissed 15 months later.

11

Jumping puzzles. I hate jumping puzzles. GOD do I hate jumping puzzles. They’re so stupid and pointless.

Strategy games where you start from, say, a caveman and a pointy stick and carefully craft a mighty city and giant, modern army over thousands of years to beat one mission. When you beat it, you move on to a new place, where you have two cavemen and no pointy stick to start all over again. Because everyone knows a real commander wouldn’t take their forces with them. Alexander the Great was known for abandoning giant armies, riding two or three maps over, and rebuilding his entire civilization from scratch.

The AI blatantly cheating. Madden is notorious for this. I had games where I took something like a 70 point lead and barely won.

12

I’m surprised nobody mentioned respawning enemies- this was more common back in NES days, but isn’t any less annoying over time.

Basically, a lot of side-scrolling NES games would have enemies that would reappear if you moved away and came back. This tended to happen alot when having to deal with the pain-in-the-ass-badguy-who-zips-around-like-a-squirrel-on-crack.

One game notorious for this was Ninja Gaiden. Ninja Gaiden had a lot of enemies that moved very quickly horizontally, or had jumping/pouncing attacks. This means I’m getting assaulted by an endless amount of cougars all trying to turn me into ninjaburger. I can dice up maybe 5 of them, but somhow my timing gets off and one of them hits me, usually into a pit. Also, the birds…I don’t know what badguys feed those birds but whatever it is it makes them do 3x as much damage as everyone else. Guy with a bazooka? He’d need to hit me 3 times with his slow-ass projectile to equal the damage an eagle can deal by dive-bombing me. And respawning eagles are even more annoying. Moving back and forth in that game is suicide, because you get enemies constantly respawning and diving/pouncing at you. Also…

Insufficient grace period. Some games are very generous with the ‘grace period’ you get after getting hit. Sometimes its long enough to get through difficult parts without taking too much damage. However some games (Ninja Gaiden gets mentioned again) have a useless amount of grace period. In Ninja Gaiden, if you get hit, you get knocked back. But the ‘invulnerability’ goes away as soon as you land. THis means it is very easy to get juggled by two enemies on either side of you, who will play volleyball with your bouncy ninja torso until you expire :mad:

13

That killed FFT for me. I didn’t play it until I had a PS2, but I’d seen it consistently come up in threads here as one of the best video games ever made, but I just don’t see it. After what is, apparently, the hardest battle in the game, you have to save an NPC from a bunch of assassins on the roof of the church, and no matter how I equipped my characters, none of them could get an action in before she killed herself. Now, I was plenty into the game up to that point, but that just ruined the entire game for me.

Another thing that bothered me about that game, and about FFX-2, is the way the class/skill system worked. Say I have a character who’s maxed out the Black Mage class. She’s as powerful a spell-caster as is humanly possible. But if I change classes to Warrior, I can’t cast any of my spells anymore. What the hell? Do I just forget them? Am I so dedicated to being a Warrior now that I won’t cast a spell under any circumstances, even when its the only thing that can save my life and, incidentally, save the world from destruction? I much preferred the Sphere Grid from FFX. Or the d20 system used in Neverwinter Nights, which, BTW, is another game with an excellent mod community.

Oh, and jumping puzzles are only ever fun if that’s the entire point of the game. Jumping puzzles in Prince of Persia are fine. Jumping puzzles in Ultima 8 are a fuckin’ travesty.

14

Nintendo seems to do this alot

Secret hidden characters/maps/levels/etc… etc… which you get as a reward for playing the game on super-extra-hard-like-Doom-on-Nightmare. Best example I can think of right now is Smash Bros. Melee. For gods sake I love that game, but it’s ruined when I go to my friend’s house, want to play as one of the hidden characters, yet he does not have this particular hidden character. Goldeneye for the N64 also bugged me with it’s system of aquiring the cheats. Oh it bugs me so much!

15

Platforms floating in the middle of nowhere.

Yeah, it’s a small thing, but it’s just so damn annoying for its sheer unrealness.

16

[QUOTE=Fern Forest]
I have to get up, take out the mem card and reboot it.

[QUOTE]
Actually I suppose all I had to do was L1 L2 R1 R2 Select Start. It’s been awhile.
Miller those were my thoughts exactly about the game. Great story, bad gameplay.

17

I thought so, too, and it damn near ruined Ultima 8 for me, until I realized that contrary to appearances, there aren’t actually any jumping puzzles in it. If you want to jump to a particular platform, you put your mouse pointer on that platform, and click. You’ll jump exactly onto it, every time.

And the respawning enemies (the Mega Man games did that, too) were annoying, but for easy-to-beat monsters they also provided an unlimited supply of health/ammo/powerups/whatever dead enemies drop. In Mega Man II, there were even a few places where you could stand in one spot doing nothing, with your Leaf Armor on, and let the enemies kill themselves on you in an endless loop. If you got lucky, the loop included an extra life each cycle, so you could get 98 lives.

18

Cheat codes. I hate them.

I’m an Age of Empires II/Age of Mythology player, and when you set up an online game you can disable cheats. However, what people like to do is wait until the last moment before they start a hosted game to enable cheats and then crush you because you don’t notice. All of the sudden they’re 2 Ages ahead and they’re attacking with full-power characters and all you have is a few villagers. Not cool.

The worst part is, the MSN Zone keeps track of how many games you leave incomplete, and it takes points away for losses. People won’t play low rated people and they won’t play quitters, so you’re doubly screwed.

19

Al Bhed is not a language, it’s a code. The words are English (or Japanese if you’re playing that version), it’s just the letters in the Al Bhed alphabet come in different order than in your standard English (or Romaji) alphabet, so of course it makes sense that Al Bhed is learned by learning which letter in the English (or Romaji) alphabet corresponds with which letter in the Al Bhed alphabet.

Anyway, here’s The Grand List of Console RPG Clichés. Quite a funny read.

20

I don’t mind spending alot of time on sidequests and overkilling the enemies and the like. For a poor kid like me, those are what make the game worth spending the money on.

However one of my biggest complaints involved the “Cheesy Plot.” These include:

Working-class relatives go off to save the princess and the rest of the foreign kingdom.

Our rag-tag, socially diverse group of heroes are the last resort when the larger multi-superpowers effort fails spectacularly.

The lone, under-supported operative must stand alone against the reject from the Gundam Anime…

A billionaire heiress is bored with her life and takes up extreme archaeology and dodges life threatening traps and fights off greedy relic hunters for kicks. And all with a body that Playmates would kill for!
Those are the ones that just piss me off. There are more, but those are for another time!