It seems that I am the only one who actually enjoys jumping sequences in FPS games!!!
I prety much play only FPS. What I REALLY hate (after playing Halo) is corridors. Moving inside corridors is the most boring thing that can happen in a game. Halo had lots of them and on top of that, you have to go all the way back through them at one point of the game. I vowed that I will NEVER buy a game that has corridors.
Another thing that bothers me is the fact that you have to (typicaly) empty about 10-20 5.56mm bullets on an enemy to kill them. And just one headshot is rarely enough to bring them down.
I also have a variety of pet peeves… perhaps my biggest is what I refer to as the “Illusion of Choice”, which is actualy different than what as already been referred to as the “Illusion of Choice” on this thread, although that one’s also a wicked pisser. (The worst example I can remember of that dates all the way back to Might & Magic 1… you’d have these super-buff characters, you’d be talking to the king of one castle, and if you said the wrong thing, the game would tell you “the palace guards throw you into jail”. Like hell they do!!! Let me kick their asses!!!)
But my illusion of choice is when the game presents the player with two different paths to take, thus presenting choice, but the player has absolutely no information about the choice, so it might as well be a coin flip.
OK, you enter a dungeon. Do you want to go left or right?
Wheee, what fun.
The thing that really bugs me about it is that I’m very much a completist. So if I enter the dungeon and go to the right, I’m going to keep wondering “what was to the left?”. If, an hour of gameplay later, I’ve continued down the right fork, cleaned out everything, and found the ladder down to the next level, I’m going to have to walk all the way back to the very beginning and go down the left fork, which will most likely turnout to be a tiny antechamber with some random powerup in it. How irritating.
Also randomly stupid is the super-cliched “you have to complete each of these submissions before you can move on… but we’ll let you choose what order you do them in”. That’s actually interesting if skills and weapons I acquire in one of them will help in another, but otherwise it’s not actually meaningful choice.
Actually, In some cases it makes more sense then having stuff just lying around. Of course, instead of one ammo box, there should be something like 50.
I have to disagree with you on that. With one character, real time is fine, but the more characters you have, the more of a pain in the ass it is to be managing 3+ characters in real time while fighting many bad guys. I can tolerate it, but I don’t like it. I’d perfer to be able to have at least some time to plan my moves and make my choices. I hated it in Balders gate, and tolerated it in Planescape: Torment.
Another “Illusion of Choice” instance: Though I can’t remember them now, I know I’ve played some games where I was asked by the badguys to join them, and I was actually given a choice. The choice may be “Yes” and “No”, where if you say “Yes” you say “No” anyway; or the choice could be between “No” and “No way José!” C’mon, what if I do want to team up with evil forces and rule the world?
The other thing that gets to me most is collecting items. “You can’t do this unless you have X amount of this random item, which has no relation to the story or gameplay, but it’s hard to find so it’ll keep you busy for a while.” Collecting things like emblems or whathaveyou as an extra for a bonus ending is ok, but otherwise it’s just a collossal pain.
And another one, though this is thankfully on the decline as of late. Too many games–particularly the classics–all had the same kind of levels. Boring First World. Obligatory Ice World. Obligatory Fire World, Desert World, Sky World, etc. It’s like the designers couldn’t imagine anything more creative than geographical regions.
Oh, and if you’re gonna mention webcomics about RPGs, you should check out RPG World. I haven’t read Adventurers, but it sounds a lot like this one.
I never got into RPG video games (I find they don’t allow me flexibility or creativity.). But judging from the handful I’ve played, I definitely prefer turn based.
In real time, I can hopefully control one character (though having a dex of 7 it ain’t easy). The others are all controlled by AIs which generally act like idiots. Instead of staying in the back and casting mighty spells, the cleric and mage walk right up to the enemy so they can make ineffective melee attacks.
In the Vampire The Masquerade video game, the AI for other troupe members allowed you to set preferences. It then ignored them completely. Rather than doing serious damage with the axe, the AI kept using Blood Awe. A power that used up blood and was pretty worthless even when it worked.
Real time combat also made draining the enemy tough. If I clicked on the enemy, I could immobilize and kill them while getting much needed blood. If I accidentally clicked on a comrade, they stopped fighting while the other character fed. Stopping and getting everybody to fight again took a bunch of clicks and valuable seconds.
VTM-Redemption was aslo filled with Illusion Of Choice. Do you want to attack the mines tommorow or wait a month? Tommorow, you say? Great the Bishop is glad to hear it. In a month you say? The Bishop tells you you’re doing it tommorow-deal with it.
Another great Illusion of Choice: “There is a health drink. Will you take it?” “You found a shotgun. Will you take it?” “There is some pistol ammo. Will you take it?”
I don’t think there’s a single time in any of the Silent Hill games where you’d ever not want to pick something up, but the game asks anyway.
One of my favorite parts of the original Dragon Warrior was when you finally reached the end and the DragonLord asked if you wanted to join him. If you said yes the game said “And the world was plunged into darkness…” as the screen faded to black. Too cool.
But I’m having a hard time coming up with video game concepts that I absolutely depise (except jumping puzzles in FPSs and the Resident Evil fetch quests, but those have been covered).
What I’m more concerned about are concepts that are disappearing. Like side scrolling shooters. The inability to save whenever you want. Continues and having to earn. I loved those things and they’re all disappearing.
Incidentally, those are all things that Contra: Shattered Solider, Maximo: Ghosts to Glory, and Ikaruga do amazingly well. Is there any wonder why those are my three favorite games of this generation of consoles?
Where have you gone, old-school sidescrollers? Mario? Sonic? Hell, I’d take Karnov at this point. (And yes, I know that there are the 3d Mario games but it’s not even close to the same.)
I don’t buy that “phased real-time” combat bullshit they’ve been trying to pass off as turn based since the first Baldur’s Gate game. Pausing the game doesn’t make it turn based. I can pause Tekken Tag, it’s still not a turn based game. And the combat in KotOR was just dull: I almost never had to actually do anything except keep an eye on everyone’s health meter and pause to administer medpacks when it got too low.
The last RPG I can think of that did turn-based right was Fallout 2. And that’s a pretty old game at this point.
Oh. Well, sorry, but that’s just lame.
In Tactics, the skills were innate, but you had to equip skills like inventory items, and there were very few slots to put them in. For example, you could only use one movement enhancing skill at a time, and you could only switch them between fights. So, I had a character who knew how to move at +5, or how to jump at +3, but he could only do one or the other. If he moved faster, somehow he’d forget how to jump higher.
The AI was also too stupid to stay out of the sunlight. An open window at noon was a death warrant for half your party.
Man, that game was annoying. Talk about abusing a liscence: you take the most role-playing intensive RPG on the market, one which purposefully neglects detailed rules in favor of style and setting, and turn it into a click’n’kill Diablo-clone. Yeah, 'cause that’s exacty what people who play World of Darkness are looking for in a computer game: mindless action, minimal character interaction.
Incidentally, I don’t mind jumping puzzles in FPS if they also allow you to save at any time. I hate having to start a level over from the beginning because I mis-timed one jump at the very end.
Klonoa 2 is actually a really good mascot side scroller for the PS2 and I think it might be the last one of it’s breed unless Sega or Nintendo come to their senses and make 2D Mario or Sonic games.
It’s a little cutesy and it’s way too easy, but at this point, it’s all we’ve got. But it’s still an excellent game.
Jumping puzzles suck in every game style except platformers. And I hate them there, too. Once in a rare while is there a good, fun, jump-based portion of a game that makes sense spatially on the level design, doesn’t require inhuman timing and fifty reloads, and has something to do with the plot of the game. Some of the jump-n-run puzzles toward the end of Jedi Outcast, like Force-running past the plasma bolts and jumping down that long piston shaft with the turning whatsitzes, that was cool. (Setting the three stupid switches for the communication array was stupid as hell.)
As for corridors in a first-person shooter, I think they are appropriate and they have their place. Different environments force different strategies upon the player and you have to decide how to react to the changes in geography. In another five years we’ll be absolutely gut-burstingly sick of outdoor environments in FPSes because right now they’re all about running around outside with our pop guns. This’ll get old really fast, too.
Also, I have to say I kinda like the save points if they’re done properly. Halo’s checkpoints worked well for me because I didn’t have to remember to save all the time, but there were only a few really frustrating places where you wished you could save at a partial success point. The save points in D&D Heroes got annoying, especially when you were ready to quit the game but you couldn’t because you had to wait until you found another stupid save dot within fifteen minutes’ walk. sigh There were enough save points in Baldur’s Gate that it was never a problem. The save-anywhere approach can all too easily be abused, as in Morrowind. You can save after literally every battle and keep as many saves as your hard drive will fit.
The game concept that I really hate, though, is the Diablo-style skill points. You can put up to twenty skill points into this ability, really! Except after you’ve put in five, you’ll realize this ability completely bites donkeys and we won’t let you have the points back! You’ll have to start over! Arrrrggh! This is one reason I don’t play Diablo much. I don’t want to have to get all the way up to level 60 just so I have enough points to test out the various combinations safely! If I pick an ability that doesn’t work with my set, I want to change my mind! Grrrrr.
Also I want to say that the cliff racers in Morrowind can kiss my ass. You can’t hear them come up behind you, they always seem to hit no matter what kind of armor you have, and they’re frickin’ everywhere. There’s no reason I’ll take damage from a stupid bird when I’m wearing as much full-body armor as I do.
Isn’t the opposite idea one of the big things people are complaining about in this thread? I mean, what’s the rationale for letting you have points back? Oh, you can’t learn any more, but you can just forget some stuff if you’d like, and then all of a sudden you can learn whatever you want instantly!
As for real-time/turn-based/pausing, it looks like I’m going to be the one person in the thread to say that pausable real-time (where you can issue commands while paused) is the perfect blend of the other two. Real time makes more sense (time doesn’t really come in discrete intervals, with exactly one action each), but this way, you have some time to think and don’t have to click like a fiend. True, you may have to hit the pause key frequently, but that’s only one key, always in the same place, and you never have to hit it in rapid succession. Some games can even be set to automatically pause for you, whenever something “interesting” happens.
[QUOTE=elf6c]
In sports games: the infernal “catch-up feature” which is a crutch for lousy AI.
QUOTE]
Empire Earth, a RTS, has this same type of feature for its AI. No matter if you destroy each and every type of resource collector or drop off point, the AI will still advance to the next age soon after you do.
Reminds me of an Old NES game called “RAMBO” based on the 2nd movie. It was just plain sad(just watch the movie. It’s more entertaining), particulary at the beginning how you are asked by Col. Troutman “Would you like to go on a mission, or stay in prision?” If you choose prison, he’ll say “Sorry, the game won’t begin until you choose the mission” and let you make the choice again(Keep going until you choose the mission).
Granted, this was a sucky game, but why even bother to give you that choice? If I wanted to play that game, it was to kill things, not avoid anal rape in the prision shower room(Granted, that might have been a more interesting game then the one we got).
I like sidequests – the more the better. Actually, in most of the RPGs I’ve played, the sidequests are more entertaining than the main quest.
A lot of the gripes seem to be with the FF series, which I’ve always liked best. I only have two problems with the series, and they’re not exactly concepts:[ul][li]They change constantly in platform, and some of the better ones aren’t available for PC[/li][li]My ex-boyfriend mentioned something once that bothers me, too, now: in combat, everyone waits on one side until they attack. The battles looks far too polite and orderly[/ul][/li]
I think my main issue with games are those that pass themselves off as RPGs when they’re really just extended combat games. I’m thinking Diablo II, here, which is addictive, but doesn’t have much of a storyline. For me, and RPG is supposed to be a sort of interactive story. There aren’t enough of those anymore, IMHO.
[QUOTE=Hamish]
[ul][li]My ex-boyfriend mentioned something once that bothers me, too, now: in combat, everyone waits on one side until they attack. The battles looks far too polite and orderly[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
This changes in X-2. The character and enemies are arrayed differently each time, and move around during the combat. And multiple initiatives can come up at once.
This is true, but don’t you think they could be worked in better?
Baldur’s Gate 2: Ok, I’ll go rescue my sister from the evil sorceror who has her imprisoned and is torturing her, but first I’ll save this town, fight that army, defend that grove, put on a play, solve a murder, learn crocheting and have a romance. I’m sure she won’t mind!
Ooh, I just remembered the ultimate example of the Illusion of Choice! The game Companions of Xanth, based on the Xanth book Demons Don’t Dream. Or the other way around. Now, granted, neither the book nor the game was exactly more than execrable, but…
The premise of the game is that you, a Mundane (non-magic person) choose a companion native to Xanth (the magic land) to guide and help you through an adventure in Xanth. You’re given your choice of four companions. The first thing that happens in the game is that you’re in a cave, with a choice of four passageways to go through. But your companion always rushes ahead through one of the passageways before you get a chance to choose. And three of the passageways lead to instant death. So you have to choose the companion they wanted you to.