There was a mission like that in Operation Flashpoint, I and my band of intrepid freedom fighters are stopped at a checkpoint, a Russian officer stopped us so we all piled out and laid into the Russians at the checkpoint. After dispatching them some more Russkies came up the road at us in an APC, then some a patrol came out of the forest at us. I managed to fend them all off, and kept one of my team alive.
I wondered why the game wouldn’t show me the next objective (even after finding it on a map and walking half way there) before I finally twigged that my comrades were all supposed to die in the firefight.
I sadly returned to my waiting commander who, at great personal risk, had taken me to safety through enemy territory and emptied the remains of my AK47’s magazine into his head. The game, satisfied with this grim act, showed me the way to the end of the level and freedom…
The reverse of this was the level of TIE Fighter that requested I blast the shields of an escaping Corellian Transport so that Assault Gunboats could jump into the battle and disable it with ion cannons. Somehow the Assault Gunboats got their first, crippled the vessel’s shields so that my missiles destroyed the ship. Happily, Imperial Command congratulated me on the capture of the ship’s captain
Games with a built in “nag” feature. Dungeon Keeper, I’m looking at you! I love to play Dungeon Keeper 2, but I won’t touch Dungeon Keeper again, because of that damned voice of evil nagging you in an angry, Klingonesque growl every 30 seconds. (That you cannot mute.) “Your creatures are becoming angry!” “Your creatures are hungry, build them a hatchery!” (When you don’t yet have the option to build a hatchery, or it isn’t possible to do so yet. Sometimes hardly any time has passed and you are building one, but it isn’t done yet and you get nagged.) That, and the fact that Reapers are IMPOSSIBLE to keep happy, even when you set them up in luxury pads away from any other creature with their own treasure hoard made me put the game down. Dungeon Keeper 2’s Voice of Evil (also narrator) sounds like Vincent Price.
Escort Missions. Particulary the Tank Crew in Medal of Honor: Allied Advance and Dr. Mobius in renegade. I don’t mind so much if I can go clear out the area first and then get my buddy to come with me, but half the time, these guys want to run out ahead of me and get killed. And then they’ll come to a stop right in front of the enemy, instead of continuing to run. I wonder why I want to save them considering they seem far to stupid to deserve contributing to the gene pool.
The infamous “Look, we’re taking all of your weapons away from you. Go find more” sequence that seems to be standred for every shooter game out there. Max Payne did it twice, a determent to a great game. Red faction is a horrible offender here, where you end up getting gassed and knocked out while wearing an airtight suit.
Unskippable cutscenes.
Video game intros which are little more then a bunch of in-game video edited together. Command and Conquer: Generals is a prime example. I don’t mind if you want to use the in-game engine to create an intro(A number of games have done this well, such as the NOLF games), but it’s sheer laziness to just take some random video of the game being played and then say “Okay, it’s an intro”. Call of Duty has some of this too, but for some reason, it works bettere there.
Forced Stealth sequences without a good reason. Someone hits and alarm and you lose. Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast is a great example, when trying to sneak onto the Doomgiver. Despite having already killed 50,000 stormtroopers thus far, the consequences of setting off an alarm is apparently too much for any jedi to handle.
Transporters. Bad guys can spawn out of nowhere when you reach a certain area, an alarm goes off or something is triggered. MoH was particulary bad about this in the later levels, where bad guys can spawn endlessly when the alarm is ringing.
You can hear the Voice of Evil for Dungeon Keeper 2 greeting you as this site opens. (He nags you, but rarely, and only if you are VERY slow. Then you hear the voice of Evil chide you in an urbane tone “If you were any kind of Keeper, you would have won by now.” I like to build My Pet Dungeons of Massive proportions, then cause a massive hero invasion and watch the chaos unfold.)
Heh, I like hearing “You have an excess of Mistresses, there’s a word for Keepers like you!” You can hear the sly wink as he says that. I always respond with “Yeah, lucky!” to that. How about “Your dungeon floor is lumpy, order your minions to jump up and down!” said in a sneering tone, or “Your minions demand cable!” Heh…
This is a good one. I don’t play WoW anymore, but there are still certain games… I always, always play a thief/rogue/brigand/assassin/whatever the game calls it. My role playing life always has thievery and trickery at it’s beginnings. Robbing the fishmarket, pickpocketing, horse stealing, lock picking… and yet I need a friggin’ key. I carried around a fancy little lockpicking kit, made with enchanted materials and blessed by gnomes and gods and crap, and I need a friggin’ key.
I don’t know if they ever fixed that back in the original EQ, but my little rogue maxed out all of her really cool roguish skills - disarm trap, lock pick, sense traps, etc. - but there was nowhere they were truly useful. By the time I left, they had begun implementing some things, but it was too little, too late. EQII had come out, and I’d been a rogue with useless skills for five long years.
Except pickpocket. That skill rocked. I wish they brought it over to EQII, but they didn’t. Damnit. Nothing was cooler than at the end of the fight, someone would loot the corpse and say, “Uh… you there! Rogue! Did you… uh… by any chance… pickpocket this guy?” And a good rogue always answered innocently, “No…” while making room in her backback for that shiny new black pearl, and was suddenly encumbered because of all the extra platinum. Actually, because of the pickpocket skill, I wouldn’t normally loot, unless there was something I specifically needed.
I hate driving. I drive just well in the real world, but on a gaming console I just am horrible. I really should get a steering wheel attachment or something.
I also hate timed missions. Blech.
I like Halo, except for the god-damned timeddriving mission at the end! Arrrrggghhhhhhhhhh!!! :mad: :mad: :mad:
Games that require you to make a hardware change during the game. One of the Metal Gear games made you plug your controller into the 2nd controller port in order to beat one of the bosses. Interesting idea, sure, but it kept me from getting past that boss for more than 6 months. Jackasses.
Also, almost everything about Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II. You could drive an Imperial Star Cruiser through the plot and programming holes in this one.
Anastasaeon I dunno where you got the idea that a rogue’s lockpicking skill was useless in EQ. (Especially if you played up to the time EQ2 came out?) There are places that people hired my rogue to pick open so they could farm them. Places like the Crypt in Sebillus, and some people need a rogue to pick their lock on the way to getting their epic 1.0 as well, not to mention getting your own Epic 1.0 and a Vex Thal key. Ssra Temple requires a good lock picker to navigate, and you need things from there to get your key. As far as poisons, there are some NASTY ones that you can make use of for boss mob encounters. I found my disarm traps to be very useful in some LDoNs as well.
I also ALWAYS split my takings with the group if anyone was leaving, or before the group was splitting up. (Including sales of items, if I needed the gem I gave the amount it would have sold for into the pot to split with the group.) I got many more groups that way. I NEVER pickpocketed on boss fights, much less raids! The server I was on didn’t tolerate that, and would spread the word that the boss mob mysteriously had no (or little) loot, and this new rogue they’d never raided with before had been there. (Often the rogue would get booted from the raid and a very nasty area if the mobs were light on loot on raids too. No pity.) I worked hard to keep my name clean, (and restore some faith in my class since because of some players my rogue was greeted with suspicion and hostility) and people actually were glad of my company since I didn’t rip them off. If it were just me versus NPCs I’d rob 'em blind. However, I kept in mind that there were other people on the other end of those pixels, and didn’t give them any grief by taking from the communal “pot”. I made use of my rogue’s skills to facilitate play, and only in groups would I pick pockets for sport, then split my take at the end of the session. Backstab ROCKED IMO. I haven’t played EQ in some time, and my rogue wasn’t my primary character. Maybe I’ll find a way to get her leveled up yet one day. (If you peek at her, look in her bags too.)
Mostly useless until higher levels. Since I’m a casual gamer, I didn’t do big dungeons. I also lost interest around LDoN. Like I said, I know they were implementing it, but too little, too late for this little rogue.
Of course. I was being facetious. Everyone had faith in me - I was very popular on my server.
I loved backstab! However, I love my new backstabs more. (Plural! I have several backstabs to choose from! Wheeee!) I’m an assassin now. One hit kills make my life much easier! But I still miss pickpocket. I loved stealing orc pants. Or worse, orc heads. That always left me a little startled.
I hate games that allow you to save past the point of no return in timed missions. I thought that people had realized that this was unacceptable back in the 8-bit days, but I recently played X-men Legends and saved my game at a save point in a timed mision when I had a little over 2:00 left, for what I didn’t realize was about 6:00 to 8:00 worth of stuff to do left. I thought for about a week that it was simply going to be impossible to complete the mission and that I would have to start the entire game over (i had about 10 hrs. invested in the game at the time), but after much practice I was able to barely run and jump my way to the end of the level.
Games that make you stop moving while attacking. I dont’ know why, but this just drives me insane; it feels SO clumsy.
Heh, I loved getting the very beaks from cockatrices in Dreadlands when I was playing her last, (stupid chicken fu) or eyeballs/spores from Sensate Reishis in Paludal Caverns when my rogue was a wee sly kit…
Sometimes, I kinda miss it. I spent a lot of time with alts in Paludal, and I remember being thrilled when Kunark came out - I thought I was going to get rich with those cockatrice beaks. Had it all planned out.
I also miss the Kunark goblins. They were the cutest things!
I still have a lot of EQ residue on me. Sometimes I start an alt in EQII, and the first thing I think of is how I should first take her to Crushbone… oh, wait. There is no Crushbone anymore. I was going to kick me some Emperor Crush ass.
Also, the moon in EQII kind of disturbs me. It’s blown up. You can see the giant crack going through it, and the particles strewing from it, forever in our lifetime spreading across the sky. That was Luclin.
Of course, this all raises the question- why do game designers incorporate some elements jumping puzzles, escort missions, times missions, bad control scheme) into games in the first place? It seems like these things at least, are fairly universally hated. Is it just a matter of increasing game difficulty?
Probably because the code is already written; the designers have years of experience with how to do these basics and laziness keeps them in the game. C’mon, who has time to think up new ideas when you have a deadline to meet?
Anastasaeon, yar I didn’t convert to EQ2, I’m more than a bit discontent with Sony atm.
As far as game controls, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare’s controls aren’t so good at times. There is no free aim system, you have to hold down a button to fire. Also, you don’t have free moving perspective, you move your character around a set scene.
I refer to the NPCs that you have to keep alive through a Starcraft or Warcraft mission as “The pretty, pretty princess” and I shove them in a corner to keep them out of my way.
I also detest pre-determined outcomes. You can beat six kinds of shit out of an enemy, but then suddenly they’ll manage to run away.
In Vampire: Bloodlines there’s a scene in which you open the door and find the vampire hunter you just killed crawling toward you. He gives a little speech which is only possible because it’s a cutscene and you can’t gut him the moment you see him, and then he takes his sweet time pulling out a remote and triggering a cave-in. Kind of like a delayed-action load bearing boss.
Also in Vampire, experience is based on completing missions, not on kills. This means that you don’t lose any points for finding a creative solution, but it also means that sometimes the difficulty is cranked up by the cheap expedient of piling on enemies that are just there to slow you down.
I loved stealing orc pants. Or worse, orc heads. That always left me a little startled.