Computer game rants Part II (game-specific rants)

The BBQ Pit
61

Every FPS which includes a random ‘stealth’ level. Jedi Knight 2, i’m looking at you. I heve progressed through the game, slaying scores of Imperial Storm Troopers, and suddenly if I am seen they will overwhelm me and it’s game over? For Fuck’s* sake why? Did they suddenly learn to shoot straight? These levels need a complete change in plaqying style and interrupt the flow of the game, they are insanely difficult, and generally need you to adopt the creep forward/quicksave method to find out how the level is laid out. Game designers, if the game features stealth as an element of the overall design, this can be a good thing, but that doesn’t mean that every game should have a ‘stealth’ level thrown in, so stoppit.

*obligatory obscenity to make post pit suitable

62

Amen to that. Soldier of Fortune 2 was the first game to introduce me to the “joys” of stealth levels, and like you, I quickly got sick of the experience. In this instance, the awesome stealth experience consisted of having to knock enemies out rather than kill them (mind you, they did look sort of cute spread out on the ground, looking as if they were sleeping), doing what you had to before they woke up again, and having your game brought to an abrupt and unwelcome end if a bad guy so much as glanced in your direction. (After failing to get through the level after getting to a point where I just didn’t know how to continue, I gave up and have never gone back to the game since.)

A sort of “quasi-stealth” level I experienced was the aforementioned infiltration of Ultor corporate HQ in “Red Faction” (mentioned in the OP). And, as was the case in your experience, my biggest gripe was that I had to start taking great pains to avoid enemies I had hitherto been able to mow down in waves. If I had just been able to go in there with my full complement of weapons and dish out a nice bit of collective punishment (ie kill everyone there), I would have been able to get to Gryphon’s office and spirit the man away within a few minutes. Oh shit, I can’t contain the rage any longer. Excuse me if you will…
I DON’T WANT TO BE CAUTIOUS AND AVOID BEING RECOGNIZED! I WANT TO GO IN THERE AND KILL, KILL, KILL IN THE NAME OF SATAN! I WANT TO PUNISH ALL THOSE FUCKERS - EVERY GODDAMNED ONE OF THEM - FOR WORKING FOR MY EVIL OPPRESSORS! SHOOT! MAIM! KILL! BURN! DECIMATE! ANNIHILATE! MUTILATE! EVISCERATE! MASTURBATE! DIE! DIE! DIE!

63

(bolding mine)

Damn you, now I have to get the coffee off my monitor :slight_smile:

64

Um sorry… That word sort of just crept in there. I don’t know how it got there, really I don’t. Methinks I’ve just been listening to way too much death metal over the years; it’s a style of music that always seems to make a most unwholesome connection between sex and extreme violence.

65

Ah, I’ve only done the Final Fantasies and Chrono Trigger(although I have Chrono Cross sitting on my desk, I just haven’t started it yet.)

Oh, hey, no problem. I know that game Dialogue drags.

grin Yeah, Tidus was whiny, but every male lead is whiny, it’s like a requirement.

The IX stratgey guide really was worthless, but I found the full guide right on Square’s webpage and that worked fine, for me. ANd I don’t mind playing kids, although the weird creatures like Cait Sith (but not the moogles) annoy me.

grin Well, I’d offer to lend you my copy, but Doomtrain just started playing it. He enjoyed watching me play, but he has different strategy ideas and techniques he like to try. He just need me to walk him throught he game.

66

Chrono Cross is a GREAT game, though it has some flaws. For one thing, it has too many playable characters. I think it has something like 44 characters, and the active party only has three slots! You need to play it, though. Now! Just don’t take Pierre on your first playthrough (it takes at least two and a half games to get all the characters).

I didn’t think that Squall (FFVIII) was whiny. I thought he was a jerk at first, but he grew as a person, as did the other characters. That’s one of the reasons FFVIII is my favorite FF, though I know that most people consider it the worst of the series. I didn’t like the “we were all orphans and grew up in the same household but we forgot” of the SeeDs.

I guess most people don’t mind playing kids, it’s just that I really hate it. I rather liked Cait Sith and his puppetmaster. I felt that his puppetmaster was a guy who was trying to do the right thing in a bad situation. I also liked Red XIII. I thought that both characters were interesting and added flavor to the game. Needless to say, given my feelings on playing children, I HATED Yuffie. Incidentally, speaking of characters that people hate playing, one guy hated playing a character in Chrono Cross because he felt weird playing a dumpy middleaged woman, he felt that they couldn’t have an adventurous spirit. Hey, I am a dumpy middleaged woman!

I love moogles…which were in Secret of Mana, by the way. And I love chocobos.

67

Lulu’s isn’t even worth it, save for the bragging rights. If you do the monster collecting quest (potentially longer, but easier and less tedious - and also potentially shorter - hey, you can do most of it just progressing), you can customise a doll to have everything except the increased Attack damage…and who uses Attack with Lulu? (Well…OK, I did, but by this point I was STILL doung 10k+)

Tidus would have been worth it, if the minigame’d been…well, not insane. (I love Chocobos, I do, but I don’t love riding them while being pelted with blitzballs.)

Square’s control configuration seems to be a time-period thing. The first few were done along the lines of the SNES controls - far right (A/O) as accept, bottom (B/X) as cancel. For some reason, round about FFVIII, they switched those around. Been a while since I played, but IIRC, the only exception is the SNES games on FF Anthology/Chronicles. (Haven’t played Tactics yet.) They’re been consistant, other than that, far as I can tell. Causes a heck of a lot of trouble playing a game from one era, then the other, though. (Playing FFVI and X-2 at the same time… Oy.)

68

Well, I’m in the middle of Tactics and V and Ihad just started VII when I got Chrono Cross. I wanted to get or two out of the way first, but if it’s that good, I may just start it. No Pierre, huh? I’ll keep that in mind.

I really loved VIII, even if Squall didn’t say a whole lot. (…) But VI is hands down my favorite. Does SeeD actually stand for anything?

I only played Cait Sith and Red XIII when the game fored me too. For some reason I tend to prefer playing the females, kids or not. It doesn’t really register, since the average age tends to be 18 for everyone, and that’s all kids to me(yeah, at the ripe old age of 23 teenagers are kids).

Moogles are great. Although I didn’t care for the pom-poms on the IX moogles.

69

I have the three books. The first is indeed fairly good. The second is too much action with insufficient plot development, and the third is worse than the game it is based on.

By the way, the light puzzle either gives you infinite tries without interruption or just unlocks if you fail it four times or so and wipe out the skeletons it releases. Unfortunately there is another stumper trap (at which I quit) about twenty to thirty minutes ahead =/

70

Thank you! The Chrono Cross bashing seems almost unwarranted at a certain point. I think most of the bashers would love it if it didn’t have the word “Chrono” in the title. And to bash the game because it’s not Chrono Trigger is to completely ignore the amazing atmosphere the game sets in every area.

Listen to “Scars of Time” and tell me there’s a better soundtrack anywhere.

You do get an item later on that can repair items. Though, I do see what you’re saying. I was so afraid to use the Mani Katti that Lyn became almost useless.

– Imran

71

Another person chiming in on the (non existant) merits of MOO3. It looked pretty, and that was about it.

And Deus Ex 2 deserves its own special corner. (In fact, IIRC it had its own pit thread when it first came out.) There is something seriously wrong when out of the four other people I personally knew who had the game, none of us could run the game as-is. We all had to do some kind of tweaking to get it to run. (Me? Before the first patch, I had to put the game into debug mode. After the first patch, I had to have it in debug mode and use a no-CD crack. I didn’t bother checking for any further patches after that.)

And that doesn’t even touch upon the crappy level design. They didn’t bother tweaking the game to take advantage of the capabilities of the PC, so you’re basically stuck with the limitations imposed by the console version. Grrr.

Plus, the endings were of the ‘I did all that for this?’ kind. Makes me think they saved those for last in the devlopment cycle and ran out of time.

<< Sunrise is nature’s way of telling you it’s bedtime. >>

72

Atrus, not Altrus.

Yeah, don’t get me started on Uru. Oops. Too late… This game isn’t user-friendly, it’s more like user-hostile (and I say this as someone who enjoyed all the other Myst games and finished them with little or no help).

Journey Cloths: It is not clever to have random cloths hanging behind rocks, above random arches, etc. which basically require searching every square inch of an age, some with zero hints at all. One linking book was on the ground behind some boxes under a stairway! I wouldn’t have ever found it except dangermom pointed it out to me–she accidentally spotted it when she was playing. Hey game designers, this sucks.

n[sup]2[/sup] puzzles: Yes, these are the puzzles which have n steps. But every step requires you to fail the first time and learn from the mistake. Hence, the first time you try to solve the puzzle you get 1 step before failure. The next time you get 2 steps, etc. Total steps to get everything done is 1 + 2 + … + n = n[sup]2[/sup]. Of course the puzzles have zero clues, so you can’t avoid this process–except for looking online for a walkthrough, which kind of defeats the purpose of the game.

Player interface: It would have been nice had the Uru designers actually looked at other 1st-person or 3rd-person games before designing their interface. Just the ability to look around without holding the mouse button down would be nice. I swear, if you don’t have RSI before playing the game, you will after. Here’s another idea: allow me to map my own keys to the commands in the game–that’s been around for several years now. Finally, do not use CAPS LOCK to switch between running and walking. You know CAPS LOCK right? How it remains set even after you leave the game? Sigh.

Inventory and object manipulation: You guys might want to add that to the game, now that your puzzles require you to carry things around and put them in a certain place. You get around that with one puzzle where the item actually follows you, but it goes away if you didn’t set everything up correctly before hand, but kicking around things with my feet is with the aforementioned hideous controls was about as fun as using a power drill on my eye.

First game ever that I’ve purchased and didn’t stick it out to the ending. Definitely the last of the series I’ll play unless they fix these problems.

73

A message to those who hate Resident Evil’s control scheme:

I’m with you, honestly. On a side note, you might like Resident Evil 4. I got a chance to take it for a spin at E3 and it was definitely game of the show. It controls sort of like Eternal Darkness-meets-Metroid Prime. Also, it looks gorgeous.

– Imran

74

I have to admit that I’ve occasionally put the first disc of Chrono Cross in my PS just to watch and listen to the opening sequence. I’ve even tried to write lyrics for “Scars of Time” but failed miserably. I think that most CC bashers are those who were disappointed that it’s not a true CT sequel.

Oh man. I hate it when game developers put out a game that MUST be patched before it can be played. That’s one reason why I dread consoles with online capabilities…sooner or later, console games are gonna be released with fatal bugs in them that require a downloaded patch before they’re playable. This is one reason why I mostly play console games these days…so far, I don’t have to find and install a patch to make the games work!

75

It is already happening:

Ninja Gaiden

Kind of related:

Thief: Deadly Shadows Bug

Thief: Deadly Shadows Patch

76

Preach it, brutha. (glance) Er, sista. Amen!

Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. (looks around for motie of little motie head banging itself against a wall. Can’t find one.) Er, Lynn? We need a new motie, here…

I’d like to think, though, that this will be a different thing on consoles than on PCs, though.

If I buy Li’l Wang-kette her favorite PC game, and I can’t get it to run, the stores have an advantage: I’m not a computer tech. PC games have often needed tweaking to run, for as long as there have been PC games.

Platform games, though, are a different beast. If I pick up the latest version of Spyro The Dragon for Li’l Wang-kette for her birthday, and that thing won’t run, then I’m headed back to the place I bought it, and ghod help the clerk who tries to tell me that he can’t exchange it.

And if I do successfully exchange it, and the new one won’t run either, then ghod help the entire store if they won’t give me a refund.

Somehow, this just strikes me as an extremely bad way to do business. How long would it be before some outlets simply refused to carry Spyro XIV: The Quest That Refused To End, simply because they were sick of dealing with angry customers?

Or, even worse, sticking up signs at the register WARNING you that “Spyro XIV requires a patch to run correctly. This patch may be found at www.thestraightdope.com,” thus inspiring me, for one, not to BUY a game that won’t run straight out of the box…?

We could be viewing a very bad Age Of Gaming here, folks…

77

Rise of Nations (& must other RTS’s) doesn’t have a good battlefield map. The minimap is too small, and the game map is too big. There is no way to find choke points and plan a strategy without scrolling around the map and it just doesn’t work.

78

Ahem.

http://www.u5lazarus.com

Thank you.

79

Operation Flashpoint (this game got raving reviews when it was released) for a) instant death when hit, b) 1 save per level, c) constantly being commanded around, d) lengthy boring clipscences I had to watch again and again - and all this came with: e) terrible textures, and f) some of the worst voiceacting ever. OF is the only game I’ve quit on and uninstalled, and that’s pretty remarkable since I just love non-linear and semi-linear shooters.

Morrowind, for a) its extreme slow walk/run speed, while at the same time giving me missions which required me to travel very long distances on foot fighting respawned creatures (cheated that one), and, b) running on a measly 20 fps on a top notch computer after tweaking.

Halo PC, for a) allowing me to carry only two weapons at any time when this game more than any other games requires a specific weapon to kill certain enemies, and b) for using built-in savepoints.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein, for including the option of collecting treasures which had absolutely nothing to do, AFAIK, with gameplay.

Unreal II, for being the most overhyped game ever which, when finally released, turned out had no interesting story and only 3 levels with good gameplay.

Splinter Cell, for not allowing me to run with my weapon drawn & ready.

Max Payne 1&2 for providing only one difficulty level to start off with, which was way too easy. Otherwise these two are amongst the best games ever released. I don’t agree with the above poster who said MP was too short. After all, most action games can be finished between meals if you don’t take the time to enjoy them (as Splinter Cell, which can be finished in three hours). It’s all in the gameplay.

Hitman 2, for asking me to be stealthy, then giving me a shitload of noisy weapons that made me able to say “screw it” and blast away, finishing most levels in less than 2 minutes.

Aquanox, for a)the worst controls ever, and b) not allowing me to loop even though the game is about dogfighting. I’ve heard Aquanox II is just as bad.

Kingpin, for cheating on the game length, by first telling me to fight my way to the end of the level, then telling me to fight my way back to the beginning.

any console ever made, for taking up resources that the gaming industry could have used to create great games for the only platform that games should be played on: The PC! :wink:

the gaming industry, for not improving graphics and those terrible console controls when they port games to PCs (insert Metal Gear Solid II).

the gaming industry II, for not making another game like Freespace II
As you can see I’m a fan of shooters. :slight_smile: There are certainly many more games to pit that I just can’t recall at the moment.

80

Oooh oooh oooh that reminds me!

Mechassault. Two phrases that should not be used in the same sentence: Battlemechs, with powerups.

Let me say that again.

Battlemechs. Which you can improve and heal with POWERUPS. FUCKING POWERUPS! That is all. :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: