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Author Topic: The Games We Hate  (Read 37995 times)

ScrambledGregs

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The Games We Hate
« on: 26 Apr 2007, 19:04 »

Use this thread to vent about games you hate: games that should or could have been great that weren't, games that are flat out awful, or games you just don't see why other people froth over it.

I hate Vagrant Story. Vagrant Story is the ultimate example of a game that I wish was a movie because the story, music, and graphics are incredible. Unfortunately, you have to actually play Vagrant Story, which is an experience so tedious, frustrating, and arbitrary that I can't believe it got such high review scores. To be fair, the basic gameplay is really fun: being able to aim at certain body parts and to time attack/defense skills into chains is a really interesting idea, and the basic platforming/puzzle elements are all done extremely well. The problem comes in the gameplay that is laid over this: the Risk system, the weapon system, and the crafting.

The Risk system is designed to discourage button mashing, plain and simple--this isn't so bad, but there are much better ways of doing this. Any attack you perform in the game increases your Risk meter. When it starts to get over 25 or so (on a scale out of 100), you begin to miss attacks more often and do less damage. The Risk meter goes down when you stand still and do nothing, and there are items to lower Risk, but what's the fucking point?? As I said, there are much better ways of discouraging or eliminating button mashing in an action RPG, and the Risk system is terrible and irritating. If I can just open a menu and use an item everytime my Risk gets too high, why even have it in the game at all?? You'll either spend too much time standing still waiting for your Risk to go down, or you'll constantly be opening the menu to use items, which makes the gameplay molasses slow.

The weapon system wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't so complicated. There are three types of weapons (blunt, piercing, and sharp edge) and on top of that there are various elemental allignments. Not a big deal; other games have elements and different weapon types. The problem is that the element and weapon types are absolutely crucial to the battle system. When you run into, say, a Fire Elemental boss, you can spend hours doing chains of 3 to 4 HP damage attacks over and over (and then tediously getting your Risk back down) or you can switch to a water elemental weapon. What's that you say, you don't have a water elemental weapon?? Well uh I guess you're shit out of luck. Even assuming you do, having to open the menu to switch weapons and/or attach/de-attach gems to affect elements slows down the gameplay. This is a game that so badly needed some kind of ring menu to quickly cycle through items and weapons I can't believe they didn't implement one after play testing. I know it can't be out of laziness , so I can only assume it was a design choice, albeit an extremely poor one.

Finally, the crafting system. Around about the late 90s onward, RPGs started to have systems wherein you could 'customize' or 'combine' various items, weapons, and/or armor to create newer, better items. The problem is that they usually give you no indication of what the result will be, leading to lots of re-loads or time spent tearing apart and re-assembling items over and over. However, in most games they are but an optional thing for the hardcore to fool with; witness Star Ocean 2, which has all kinds of item creation and customization crap, but you can easily beat the game without touching any of it. Not so for Vagrant Story: weapon and item crafting are mandatory. In fact, Vagrant Story is the absurd climax of this concept. There are so many stats and numbers to keep track of, it's hard to know whether your weapons and armor are going to improve through the process or not. Rather than playing the game and having fun, you will spend chunks of time fucking around with crafting until you can get the right weapon/armor combos to defeat the bosses.

I can see how the game might appeal to some people because it is a unique experience, combining an action/stealth game with lots of strategy and hardcore jRPG elements. However, for the other 99% of the population, Vagrant Story should rightfully forever stand as a game that squandered all its potential by trying to be unique and complex but ended up being frustrating and needlessly complicated.
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Dimmukane

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #1 on: 26 Apr 2007, 20:37 »

Two games for the list:  Advent Rising and Dreamfall: The Longest Journey (which I don't hate at all)

Advent Rising had a wonderful concept:  Hire a prolific sci-fi writer to pen your story, superpowers + third person shooter, branching storylines that span over a trilogy. 

Instead, the story, although quite nice on its own (probably better in its entirety, which we will never see) was panned as being too Halo-like.  The gameplay was pretty fun, but only after leveling up a bit, and was also panned as derivative.  There was also this thing where you would warp-tackle, and it basically worked wonders on anything that wasn't a boss or vehicle, that kinda made it really easy.  The two difficulty levels weren't very different from each other, either.  The branching storyline didn't branch much.  It basically didn't matter which of the two possibilities you picked, the same thing happened with both options, just to different characters.  And to top it off, the framerate was somewhat unstable, and the game could be beaten in as little as 4 hours.

On the plus side, the soundtrack was pretty good (even though this too suffered from glitchery, where it would cut volume or drop completely for no apparent reason).  It also had great art direction, in my opinion.  But due to lack of team members and good marketing, all sequels have been effectively canceled. 

Dreamfall I enjoyed immensely, with my only qualm being the fighting system, which thankfully didn't come up too often.  I am also of the opinion that the entire Trilogy should be redone in cinema.  That's really all I have to say about it.
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #2 on: 26 Apr 2007, 23:31 »

Superman Returns.  I know that Superman has a legacy of having the hands down worst games ever and I had high hopes for this new one to finally break the mold and lead us into a glorious time of Superman games that are actually good


instead it made me feel empty, actyally empty, inside.  The camera was terrible, flying sucked and was nothing like I hoped, and all you did was beat people up.  I know that this is pretty much what Superman does, but he does it with a finesse that this game missed completely.

the only good thing that I found about this game was that I got to play it for free when I rented Marvel Ultimate Alliance
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Johnny C

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #3 on: 27 Apr 2007, 00:30 »

PLUS SIDE: Lack of green fog.
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McTaggart

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #4 on: 27 Apr 2007, 01:43 »

I was typing this great big rant about how much I hate Oblivion but just got too angry and deleted everything.
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Scytale

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #5 on: 27 Apr 2007, 03:06 »

Half Life 2,

*begin rant*

This game is the single most overhyped peice of crap I've seen or played, I may be biased because I'm not a FPS fan but seriously why the hell is this game praised so much.

The storyline makes no sense, wtf I'm trying to escape a city, there are aliens or something, some crazy scientist gives you a gravity gun??? then wtf Zombies and a crazy preacher. Never got any further then that because it was pissing me off too much. If your going to try and integrate a storyline into a shoot em up make sure it makes sense. Seriously a gravity gun friggin ridducoulus purely an excuse to show off the "physics engine"

Thats my third complaint. Your running for you life shooting up people then BAM you get to one of these stupid physics puzles they've inserted just to show off their game engine. You're in the middle of a jetski chase then you've got to get up and start stacking together barrallels to make a ramp, lame. If you want to put puzzles into your game don't have them detract from the action please, look at Quake perfect example, there were lots of puzzles in there, had to hit switches in a set order shoot targets to open doors etc and they didn't detratct form the action at all in fact there I've said it Quake is about 300* better then halflfe 2, none of this nonsense with a storyline just had you in a castle blasting away monster with a fucking nailgail, no messing around with gravity guns no crappy physics puzzles, just non stop action. If you want multiplayer play Unreal Tournement that has interesting weapons and doesn't use that stupid source thing.

On that subject, thats final nail in the coffin the damnable DRM of the Source software, in order to play HL2 you need to enable it online and have this thing running in the background all the time. The thing always forces you to download new patches all the time. Won't let you play with the version 1 software on the actual half life 2 cd's.

If your someone like me who doesn't normal have Windows on their pc, but set it up specifically because every one was raving about this game, played the game for about 3 hours got pissed off and un-installed it and Windows. Then two years later decide maybe you were a bit harsh and should try again only to have to sit through hours worth of valves patches, (why oh why  does it patch so slowly???) Just to play the damn thing it's not  worth it.

*end rant*

Seriously

If you want to play a good FPS play the original Quake or if you want multiplayer play Unreal Tournement both games are a lot better.
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McTaggart

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #6 on: 27 Apr 2007, 03:46 »

They should have left halflife 2 at just that Route Canal chapter (the first one, and the one that's in the demo). I think they were trying to be mysterious with the story, but did that but leaving information out rather than giving you hints. Steam is what's stopping me from giving it another try. The software hates me and gets more and more like just a platform to sell you shit with time and I really don't have the bandwidth for this.
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nihilist

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #7 on: 27 Apr 2007, 07:14 »

The whole reason Valve were hyping episodic content was "delivering content more frequently, but in smaller pieces."  Really?  The amount of time between episodes one and two puts that myth to bed.  (Though I did like HL2, myself.)

Doom 3.  How can you not hate that piece of shit?  Quake 4 as well.  Way to fail, iD, way to fail.
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #8 on: 27 Apr 2007, 08:00 »

I gotta agree with you on the Doom3 and Quake4 front. It's like they said on Penny Arcade: iD knows how to make a really great, solid game engine, but the games themselves are like a fourteen year old's high school notebook. "...and when you turn the corner, there's a GIANT SKELETON! with ROCKET LAUNCHERS on his shoulders! and INVISIBLE SKIN! WOO SCARY!"

It's like the best idea they have is variations of ADAM from Buffy. Yeah. that didn't work too well there, either. A nightmare mix of demon/human/cyborg isn't that scary! Cut it out!

I also, sadly, have to echo my dissatisfaction with Half-Life 2. Yeah, it's got a kinda decent story, but cliffhangers are never cool. Also, it may just be my crappy 5-year-old PC, but the load times are horrible! I have literally been able to do various home repair projects waiting for the next areas to load. I went back to play it last weekend, and got 5 shelves hung up during the dead times. And that was just until Ravenholm!

As far as good, fun games where you shouldn't even give a crap about what's going on otherwise, I like UT2k4, but this isn't about games we like, it's games we hate. That claim goes towards two games that get the "thank god it was a rental!" award. Daikatana for the N64 (I can't blame Daikatana on this. I knew it was going to be awful, but I had to see what the hype was about), and Superman 64 (this turd needed to die young).

Johnny Evilguy

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #9 on: 27 Apr 2007, 08:09 »

Perfect Weapon for the PS1

Saga Frontier 1

Whats wrong with Obvilion? Can you summarize your big rant McTag?
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Dimmukane

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #10 on: 27 Apr 2007, 08:22 »

If you're curious about the story behind the Half-Life series, just google it.  It's basically a rewrite of 1984.  I enjoyed the game though, I've beaten it 5 times, was briefly addicted to CS:S, and I plan on buying the Xbox 360 version as well.

And I'm assuming McTaggart is a Morrowind fan, based on his avatar.  I wouldn't know what that's like, I never played more than three hours into it because by the time I finally got around to it I just had other games I had planned on playing more anyways.  So, not having that comparison always leaves me at odds with people who do. 

Like Johnny, I'm also curious as to why you didn't like it, or what you may have thought Morrowind did better than Oblivion.  If it really is that good, I might go back and play it this summer, since most of the games I want got pushed back until fall.
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ackblom12

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #11 on: 27 Apr 2007, 09:03 »

I don't know about Mctaggart's reasons for disliking it, but coming from someone who didn't like Morrowind either, I just thought Oblivion did a pretty shitty job of everything I wanted it to do well.

Radiant AI was ass, there seemed to be a total of 6 voice actors in the game, the leveling system is complete ass (both skills and the scaled leveling), every humans face looked like utter garbage and the game engine was horribly optimized. The game was also an action/adventure game with RPG elements, not an RPG. Minigames are also a poor way of doing skills, especially when they are as easily abusable and annoying as they are in Oblivion.

Command & Conquer Generals.
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0bsessions

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #12 on: 27 Apr 2007, 09:28 »

Suikoden IV. Every single game in this series has been a stroke of genius, with the exception of IV.

Whereas you had your original six party battle system, something you didn't often see, and in III they evolved the battle system further to incorporate the idea of the characters moving on the field of battle. IV scrapped all that and made it the same shit Final Fantasy ripoff system we've been using for the past like sixteen years. It somehow took this stale formula and made it worse.

The characters were all generic, boring or outright annoying. The only thing worse than a cast of six or seven useless and boring characters is a cast of 108 useless and boring characters. Seriously, collecting all 108 Stars of Destiny is usually one of the most engrossing and enjoyable parts of any Suikoden game due to the deep characterization and fun extra story you unlock, but this was just lame, redundant and time consuming. Also, I hope whoever came up with Snowe dies in a fire.

The most overwhelming and lame final bossfight EVER! I've played dozens of RPG's. I finished Chrono Cross, where you fight a frustrating offshoot of Lavos that's a pain to beat. I've finished Final Fantasy IX, where the final boss is never mentioned until you actually fight him. I've beaten Xenosaga, where the boss was so lame I can't even remember what it was. THIS was worse. It's a giant fucking crab that has nothing to do with anything that you fight after climbing a big fucking tower filled with redundant and annoying random battles. Fail.

Sailing = Teh suck.

The storyline was bland and cliche. Homage is fine, hitting your roots is fine, but repeating the same shit over and over is not.

The worst thing, though? It is a bad, bad game packed right in between four PHENOMENAL games. The original, straight through to III, each got subsequently better, in my opinion, and V was one of the best RPG's I have ever played. When it's got to compete against a track record like that, it's fucked.

A close second would be Blood Omen II. They basically took everything great about the Legacy of Kain series, threw it out the window and gave us this buggy, redundant piece of shit. The only thing it had going for it was the incredible voice acting that the Legacy of Kain series has maintained since the beginning.
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McTaggart

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #13 on: 27 Apr 2007, 09:50 »

I'll see what I can do with just dot points. Imagine some eloquent text around all this if you'd like.

I really, really enjoyed Morrowind. It's become my benchmark for what a single player roleplaying game should be. I still play it now. There are still new things now. Oblivion was a step backward in every respect bar shiny graphics and I suppose the combat system.

- The combat system still sucks. There are all these fancy moves you can do at higher skills, but it's rarely a better option than just going for the damage. What's worst is that they removed a lot of the specialisation and limitations that made Morrowind interesting and diverse. I liked that my assassin couldn't just pick up a claymore and be just as effective as though he'd been using one all his life. I liked that axes and maces were different. I LIKED MY GODDAMN SPEARS. They didn't do anything to fix how not fun it was when you got blobbed by multiple attackers. The new shiny moves that you can do, without having any group removal, lend themselves to one on one fights. The poisons were a nice addition, except that they applied to everything (I made myself only use them on daggers and arrows). The combat felt even less tactile than Morrowind's. It's too simple.

- The magic system was stripped bare. All those neat effects are gone. No chance to fail felt wrong, the staves felt wrong, casting with your weapons out felt wrong. It was way too simple.

- You can only enchant or make spells if you are high up in the mages guild, you can only sell stolen items if you're in the thieves guild or have some rediculously high mercantile skill. I do not want to be railroaded into a faction because I want to use a feature of the game.

- Lack of factions and lines of quests. Fighters, Thieves, Mages, Dark Brotherhood, Blades. Any others? There was that one where you get the little hut just north of lleyawin or whatever but I'm not sure if there was even a second quest for that (or if it affected anything at all). They went and made it too simple. This will tie in with the last point that I'll make.

- The interface treated me like I was six and was obviously built for the xbox (which translates to a crappy interface for the pc). It was made way too simple and tok much more effort do anything in.

- Fast travel and map markers. "You'll have to search the caves in the area to find the thing for the who cares", no I won't. I'll just go to where this little arrow is pointing. The fact that you never had to walk any real distance made the bits where you did have to walk seem more boring and tedious by comparison. Did you find yourself fast travelling from one section of the Imperial City to the next, even though you could almost see the door from where you stood? I didn't like being shown exactly what I had to do and exactly where to go. You never had to think; it was all too simple.

- The world was bland. I don't know what they did with all of the elder scrolls canon but it sure didn't end up in here. There was very little history and even less politics or grassroots movements that were afoot. All of the npcs just existed, they didn't interact with each other past little inane chats that never changed. Where there are interactions between characters and organisations there is only one side you can be on. You never get the other point of view. You never ever care. The main story seemed completely arbitrary to everything else in the world. The gods were pointless, I can't even remember who was who or who did what. The different regions never really seemed natural. There werent progressions, just that each city was from some other provence ('cept Skingrad and and the Imperial City). The fact that there were pretty much just large cities, and none of them seemed to have a point. Anvil was the only one that made sense, and if it was the single port in the whole provence and there were no other ways to get into there, why was it poor and run down? There was no atmosphere in the cities either, though Morrowind suffered a little (less) from this as well. Nothing was worth reading about and there were very few of the books that would be any good to you if there was. It lacked the immersion that I've really begun to crave from things I do with my time.

I'm fine with guided tours through oil rigs, but I don't need someone to hold my hand through the children's playground.
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Blyss

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #14 on: 27 Apr 2007, 11:25 »

Boy, do I feel you on that first post.

Vagrant Story is the only game I've ever owned, but regret buying.  For every reason listed above, that game was just horrible.  And, yes the story was probably great, but I didn't have the patience to play the game to finish it.  Utterly ridiculous the amount of micromanagement necessary to mess with the weapons in the game, just to try and fight something.

Worst combat system I've ever seen, and worst gameplay I've ever experienced.
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #15 on: 27 Apr 2007, 12:32 »

Man, it's rare nowadays for me to enter a thread and so vehemently disagree with anyone's opinions, let alone those of more than one person.

Half-Life 2 is very firmly in the "fething rules!" section of my preferences, and shall forever remain them. It's an equisitely balanced FPS game with an excellent difficulty curve, a near-infinite supply of atmosphere and style, and characters who are actually CHARACTERS. You can damn near see Alyx Vance fighting back tears at a later point in the game.

Play it again. Stop. take the time. Pay attention to the dialogue. Feel confused? GOOD. You're supposed to be confused. You've been thrust headlong into a violent and unfamiliar world with no apparent ties to your previous experience, and the first time you see anything that's even remotely familiar, it's the face of one of your old colleagues who, moments ago, looked like he was about to make you feel a lot of pain for no apparent reason.

It's a perfect example of a modern shooter done properly, and there's a very good reason it's been riding high on the list of best games ever for three years.
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ScrambledGregs

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #16 on: 27 Apr 2007, 18:55 »

I play marginally bad translated jRPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics and Xenogears to be confused. I don't want that kind of shit in a FPS, which is why I for one loved Doom 3. Yes the engine is better than the game, and juggling the flashlight sucked, but I literally hadn't played a console FPS since Goldeneye and Doom 3 on Xbox was like a new thing for me. As for Half Life 2, I played Half Life 1 back in the day and was left with no desire to continue with the series. If the FIRST GAME in your series is going to end on a cliffhanger, and it's going to take you nearly a decade to deliver a sequel, then go take a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.

I tried to give Vagrant Story another chance today, and got slightly farther. I still feel the same, if not stronger. This game would be so fucking good if they would just take out half of the ideas, or at least make them optional. It kind of reminds me of the opposite of a Nippon Ichi game: it's much shorter and an action RPG, but all of the extra stuff is mandatory instead of optional. You can play through most of a Nippon Ichi game without messing around with all the uber equipment/character/level stuff whatsoever.
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Dimmukane

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #17 on: 27 Apr 2007, 20:44 »

The thing that I loved about Oblivion was the huge world to walk through.  Sometimes I just walk around in it for half an hour with no purpose, just to look at rocks and trees and things.  I once spent five minutes on a rock watching a deer.  If it had no story whatsoever, just monsters and shops, I still would've bought it for the full 60 bucks, because I had a lot of fun doing that.  I know Morrowind has that too, but from what I played of it, the entire look of the world was somewhat darker and less interesting.  Does it get better?

And I don't know if you've looked into Two Worlds, but it's larger than Oblivion, and is slightly more RPG-oriented.  Before I post the link, be warned, the single player forces you to be a human male.  The multiplayer, however, doesn't.  There aren't as many character animations either, supposedly because of the larger area.  I'm getting it, for the same reason I play Oblivion, but you might find this interesting.

http://www.2-worlds.com/#
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #18 on: 27 Apr 2007, 21:52 »

The world is darker for sure, but I found it had a lot more to it. By the world though, I mean the terrain and the people and the lore. There'sso much more of it and it's so much more convincing too.

Two World: sure, I'll give it a shot.
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Scytale

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #19 on: 28 Apr 2007, 02:52 »

Man, it's rare nowadays for me to enter a thread and so vehemently disagree with anyone's opinions, let alone those of more than one person.

Half-Life 2 is very firmly in the "fething rules!" section of my preferences, and shall forever remain them. It's an equisitely balanced FPS game with an excellent difficulty curve, a near-infinite supply of atmosphere and style, and characters who are actually CHARACTERS. You can damn near see Alyx Vance fighting back tears at a later point in the game.

Play it again. Stop. take the time. Pay attention to the dialogue. Feel confused? GOOD. You're supposed to be confused. You've been thrust headlong into a violent and unfamiliar world with no apparent ties to your previous experience, and the first time you see anything that's even remotely familiar, it's the face of one of your old colleagues who, moments ago, looked like he was about to make you feel a lot of pain for no apparent reason.

It's a perfect example of a modern shooter done properly, and there's a very good reason it's been riding high on the list of best games ever for three years.

I disagree completely here, I don't think Half Life 2 has any atmosphere at all, I'm too busy getting confused by the lame storyline and solving shitty physics puzzles to get immersed into the game. 

If you want to play games with CHARACTERS play a RPG (Which I love), when I play a FPS I want to blow shit up.

 No one (I'm talking about game designers) really gets this anymore and it pisses me off back when I used to play games a lot, as opposed to now where I rarely have the time, a FPS was something like Doom, Quake or Duke Nukem 3d, it was just you, your gun and a bunch of enemies between you and the exit. Sure the game engines weren't so hot (though I still like the original quake engine a lot). But the games were fun, the engines didn't get in the way of you enjoying the game, there were no shitty physics puzzles no storyline, you could sit down and with in 2 mintues you'd be straight into the action.
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Dimmukane

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #20 on: 28 Apr 2007, 09:49 »

Man, it's rare nowadays for me to enter a thread and so vehemently disagree with anyone's opinions, let alone those of more than one person.

Half-Life 2 is very firmly in the "fething rules!" section of my preferences, and shall forever remain them. It's an equisitely balanced FPS game with an excellent difficulty curve, a near-infinite supply of atmosphere and style, and characters who are actually CHARACTERS. You can damn near see Alyx Vance fighting back tears at a later point in the game.

Play it again. Stop. take the time. Pay attention to the dialogue. Feel confused? GOOD. You're supposed to be confused. You've been thrust headlong into a violent and unfamiliar world with no apparent ties to your previous experience, and the first time you see anything that's even remotely familiar, it's the face of one of your old colleagues who, moments ago, looked like he was about to make you feel a lot of pain for no apparent reason.

It's a perfect example of a modern shooter done properly, and there's a very good reason it's been riding high on the list of best games ever for three years.

I disagree completely here, I don't think Half Life 2 has any atmosphere at all, I'm too busy getting confused by the lame storyline and solving shitty physics puzzles to get immersed into the game. 

If you want to play games with CHARACTERS play a RPG (Which I love), when I play a FPS I want to blow shit up.

 No one (I'm talking about game designers) really gets this anymore and it pisses me off back when I used to play games a lot, as opposed to now where I rarely have the time, a FPS was something like Doom, Quake or Duke Nukem 3d, it was just you, your gun and a bunch of enemies between you and the exit. Sure the game engines weren't so hot (though I still like the original quake engine a lot). But the games were fun, the engines didn't get in the way of you enjoying the game, there were no shitty physics puzzles no storyline, you could sit down and with in 2 mintues you'd be straight into the action.

Download the Coastline To Atmosphere mod.  It's still got a few puzzles, but I haven't come across a physics puzzle yet.  It's a lot of run and gun type stuff, you actually might like it, despite it's lack of polish.

That being said, you're sort of at odds with the rest of the FPS community.  Most of the other FPS players want something new, or something more complex than aim-and-shoot-and-jump-and-get-this-keycard.  You're not alone, there are quite a few people who still love Doom and Quake, but most of the other FPS players have decided to move on, hence the change in the way FPS games are played nowadays.  Like Switchblade said, it's a Modern shooter.  Modern shooters don't try to be as basic as Duke Nukem.  To be honest, those kinds of games have almost stopped being made...the most recent one was I think SiN:Vengeance, which ironically was made with the same technology as Half-Life 2, and that was released in late 2005.
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nihilist

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #21 on: 28 Apr 2007, 10:18 »

Stick to Rocket Arena if all you want is to rail somebody.

The rest of us want our games to tell a story.
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ackblom12

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #22 on: 28 Apr 2007, 12:48 »

Bah, play fucking Painkiller if you want run and gun. It's the only game I've played in recent years that comes anywhere near matching DOOM 1, DOOM 2 or Duke Nukem 3D (all of which I play regularly) in that respect.

I'll still regularly play through Half-Life and it's sequel for the great story and atmosphere though. They are basically the only modern shooters that I enjoy.
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #23 on: 28 Apr 2007, 13:00 »

I have to come in here and take a stand against the Oblivion hate to say:

Morrowind.

I should not have to walk for fucking ever out to the middle of nowhere with no direction or method of making it go faster just to complete a stupid goddamned quest. Maybe it gets better. I don't know.

IT IS TOO GODDAMN TEDIOUS.
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ScrambledGregs

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #24 on: 28 Apr 2007, 13:22 »

I spent more time in Morrowind creating characters and trying to be a dick to townspeople than I ever did actually playing it. The game is non-linear to the point it feels like a MMORPG you're accidentally playing offline.
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ackblom12

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #25 on: 28 Apr 2007, 13:36 »

I have to come in here and take a stand against the Oblivion hate to say:

Morrowind.

I should not have to walk for fucking ever out to the middle of nowhere with no direction or method of making it go faster just to complete a stupid goddamned quest. Maybe it gets better. I don't know.

IT IS TOO GODDAMN TEDIOUS.

To be fair, I hate them both equally.
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #26 on: 28 Apr 2007, 19:30 »

Morrowind was enthralling for awhile then I didn?t play it for about a week and so I?d forgotten what quests I was doing so I checked my journal and it was a mess. No quest log, just a dated journal. Half the quests I had weren?t even in there. I freed some Cat things from a mine but they never ran away and they still reported me for stealing mine ore. Then Oblivion came out.
I started the game and it seemed fun and basically the first thing I did was head into the arena which I easily conquered...at level 2. Seriously I was barely out of the womb and yet I was so awesome? I didn't understand that. After that I thought hmmm big world what will I do next? I can?t decide! The game is too big and without a finish line in sight I stopped playing. I enjoy the fact it?s not blatantly linear but i appreciate SOME direction. Bah.
They better make Fallout 3 awesome.
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #27 on: 28 Apr 2007, 22:15 »

With the (usually) excellent directions given by whoever gave you the quest and the paper map (Morrwind's paper map is the single greatest accompaniment to a game I've ever seen. It's damn near perfect in it's accuracy and detail. If you're told to head south, then turn southeast at the two tall rocks you can look on the map and find what you are after southeast of the two tall rocks drawn just south of where you are) I have never gotten hopelessly lost. The way it didn't hold your hand and treated you like you could think for yourself was what kept me coming back.

I liked the walking, it made it much more immersive and made it feel like a role playing game rather than an action game with pretty crappy action mechanics.

The journal is much nicer with the Tribunal expansion (and I think they learnt their lesson for any future games)

"The game is too big"
You obviously look for something different in a game than I do. More expansive is better, provided the world is coherent and accepts you into it. Rather than 'what do I want to do?' try first 'who is my character' and then 'what would they do?'. Morrowind was a role playing game where you so almost had the ability to actually play the role of your character. In oblivion you could kill shit I suppose.

What I'm hoping for in Fallout 3 is the same turn based, hex based combat that two had (this was excellent), a way to finish the story without taking a life, movements to join that change the world (or fail but leave a bit of an impact on you or the world, I would love a game where you can't save the world), no good/evil dichotomy, relationships between factions and characters that change depending on events, a chance to not even begin the main quest and the two most important ones; 1) History, backstory and intrigue. History from more than one painfully objective point of view. Rather than information about the past, information and opinions about the present that happened before now. I want a world to lose myself in that is believable. 2) No goddamn handholding and the ability to solve problems the way my character would do it.

It's not gonna happen though, they're going to make a game that will sell four billion copies rather than a game that most people will just go ":(, it's too confusing/hard/big/open".

Also, you can't defend Oblivion by attacking Morrowind, that just doesn't make sense. I suppose I'm kinda guilty of the inverse of that, but these were things that I had seen done by the same company before and was promised in the sequel. I hate it because they pulled all their punches and didn't do what they more than had to ability to, instead making a game pandering to the damn xbox kiddies and their bottom line.



I look for stories and innovation in my fpses. Sometimes run and gun is fun, but then I damn well want a timer, shots fired, shots hit, number of enemies killed, points collected and every other stat you can imagine to come up at the end of a level. Not enough games do this.
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Dimmukane

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #28 on: 28 Apr 2007, 23:36 »

I'm not attacking Morrowind...more defending Oblivion on the grounds that I haven't been tainted with Morrowind's evil geist.

Back on-topic with the TC now, Prey was somewhat wasted potential.  I mean, it did it's thing (portals and gravity and spirits, oh my!) a lot, but they could've done it better.  After seeing the first video of Portals, it kinda pissed me off how simplistic the puzzles in Prey were.  And I really wish they played around with the planets and stuff, like fight a boss from that miniature planet in Downward Spiral, weaken him and a portal back out opens up and you can shoot him some, and then he recovers and creates a portal back in under your feet.  Or tunnels in the miniature planets, or whipping around the planets in the tiny ship things like a comet would. 

Also, the weapons, outside of the shotgun, pissed me off.  They were so utterly...generic, alt-fire on a lot of them was stupid, only one ammo clip for each weapon.

And the cheesy way they tacked on the option for a sequel sucked mightily.

The rest of it was really good, though, I love games that let you look up at the stars (Quake 4, Oblivion), which are beautifully bitmapped.
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #29 on: 29 Apr 2007, 04:01 »

Also, you can't defend Oblivion by attacking Morrowind, that just doesn't make sense. I suppose I'm kinda guilty of the inverse of that, but these were things that I had seen done by the same company before and was promised in the sequel. I hate it because they pulled all their punches and didn't do what they more than had to ability to, instead making a game pandering to the damn xbox kiddies and their bottom line.

Actually, I can defend Oblivion by attacking Morrowind, because Oblivion did it right. They had a world that was simultaneously overwhelmingly huge and perfectly accessible. They didn't punish the player for not wanting to spend 20 minutes walking to a cave to artificially make the game "more immersive" because you're wasting a fuckload of time staring at the next rock you have to pass. They still rewarded the player for exploring, though, since 80% of the game you probably won't see just by doing the main quests. The only flaws to the game were that the leveling system was broken and combat was too shallow.

I'm 100 hours in and still loving the game, though. The most breathtaking sight I've ever seen was after I bought Knights of the Nine and unlocked Frostcrag Spire, went straight to the top, and looked out over Cyrodiil. Simply amazing, the detail and love that went into it.

Rule number one of making a video game is that it should be fun. They made a game that was way more fun to way more people. Good on them.
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #30 on: 29 Apr 2007, 04:26 »

Alternatively, Morrowind did it right. The walking wasn't intended to add to the immersion, that's just a byproduct of them not seeing a need to add shortcuts. If there was a concious intention there it was to add a bit of a downside to heavy armour and filling your inventory full of everything you might ever need.There is absolutely nothing that I can say to make you think this and there is absolutely nothing you can say to sway me to your point of view. We're after different things in games and that's not gonna change.

They threw out their niche to pander to a wider audience, I'm disappointed (and a little bitter) that they didn't deliver the spiritual sequel to a game that I love.

Rule number one of a roleplaying game is that it should be engaging. The game was much less engaging.
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #31 on: 29 Apr 2007, 08:03 »

I'm somewhat of a twitch gamer, I'll admit, so I found the length of time it takes to get into Morrowind to be a little too long for my liking, which is why I stopped playing after a few hours.  I'll give it another shot this summer, but that's one of the reasons I was much more immersed in Oblivion, was that it was a lot simpler to get involved with the game.  And with Morrowind, for some reason I didn't feel like we were allowed to stray too much from questing.  I just got kinda impatient with the whole thing and decided to play something else.  But seriously guys, this thread is derailed.  Pick up the pieces.
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nihilist

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #32 on: 29 Apr 2007, 08:32 »

I got tired of Oblivion pretty quickly.  Too much aimlessness for my liking.  I do hope that Fallout 3 turns out well.
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #33 on: 29 Apr 2007, 10:41 »

Half Life 2

The storyline makes no sense, wtf I'm trying to escape a city, there are aliens or something, some crazy scientist gives you a gravity gun??? then wtf Zombies and a crazy preacher. Never got any further then that because it was pissing me off too much.


Um, If you only played a small portion of a game then you have absolutely no right or authority to critique it either positively or negatively. The story is an evolving one. The game is a series with future installments where the story is further explained and more and more comes to light. It is gradual. It has pacing. It doesn't hit the player over the head with the entier plot from the get-go. It is really rather foolish to judge a game based upon a few levels and as a result I think your rant holds no water. Play and finish the game and then come back and tell us what you think.
« Last Edit: 29 Apr 2007, 15:22 by TheFuriousWombat »
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #34 on: 29 Apr 2007, 12:24 »

They threw out their niche to pander to a wider audience, I'm disappointed (and a little bitter) that they didn't deliver the spiritual sequel to a game that I love.

I'm really worried that's going to be how I'm going to feel about Fallout 3.
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Scytale

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #35 on: 30 Apr 2007, 00:50 »


Um, If you only played a small portion of a game then you have absolutely no right or authority to critique it either positively or negatively. The story is an evolving one. The game is a series with future installments where the story is further explained and more and more comes to light. It is gradual. It has pacing. It doesn't hit the player over the head with the entier plot from the get-go. It is really rather foolish to judge a game based upon a few levels and as a result I think your rant holds no water. Play and finish the game and then come back and tell us what you think.

I can apreciate games that have a storyline etc, but not when it's disjointed enough to have an impact on my enjoyment of the game. I played up to the Zombie level (Ravendark I think it was called), then I got too frustrated with the game to continue playing, so sadly I don't think I'll ever finish it. The whole use gravity gun solve physics puzzles repeat just really bugged me, somepeople love the game I get this but well I'm not a fan, since this threat was created to rant, I think I'm pretty justified in my ranting.
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Johnny C

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #36 on: 30 Apr 2007, 01:16 »

If you want to play games with CHARACTERS play a RPG (Which I love), when I play a FPS I want to blow shit up.

I want you, Scytale, to look over this statement. I want you to pore over it and memorize it with all the energy you can muster. I want this phrase to enter into your very core, to become memorized and repeated over and over again until you understand its every possible inflection.

Now I want you to think about some things. Think about the movie The Wild Bunch. Think about how tough a time Sam Peckinpah must have had getting such an artistic Western made. Sure, there's a big gunfight at the end but most of the movie asks tough and uncomfortable questions about morality! Nobody wants to see a Western that asks those sorts of questions! And when people think "science fiction" they think lasers and shooting and stuff! Where did Arthur C. Clarke get off writing about monoliths and evolution and my God it being full of stars? What a jerk. At least the monolith could have shot a laser, right? And why did the Beatles make Sgt. Pepper anyways? Pop music was going perfectly fine without any big bands releasing crazy, pretentious art music! Nobody wants to buy that when they're listening to pop, right?

See where this is going?

I want you to realize that gamers are having a hard enough fucking time as it is getting established artists to consider video games as art without people pulling this kind of garbage. Jesus Christ, man. Instead of being a genre gamer, pull yourself together and just play the goddamn game. If I could make it through about a third of the game more than you did and I'm running Half-Life 2 on a three-year-old Dell with no upgrades then surely you as a power user can slog through a plot you've barely even delved into (and, honestly guys, isn't that confusing) and actually start to appreciate games with emotional heft outside of one goddamn genre.

Painkiller, which was mentioned, is great. But it was also great at providing that atmosphere, which was crucial. And it felt a little shallow because there was nothing really behind it conceptually besides "dude goes to purgatory and totally rips shit up brah!"

I don't want to waste my time on anything which doesn't give me a reason to care. Music, movies, books, video games - at the end of the day, I want something that engages me. Video games are already far from a passive form as it is, so why should they only be interesting on a purely superficial level?

Oh, hating games. Uh, I played FlatOut. It was pretty bad.
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Scytale

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #37 on: 30 Apr 2007, 03:56 »

I haven't actually seen "the Wild Bunch", but your movie analogy is a good one.

I see games kind of the same way as movies, when I sit down to play a game it's like renting a movie, if I rent an action movie I know I'm going to have lots of explosions, and little in the way of plot development, same with games,  For me FPS are the action movies of the games world, maybe I'm wrong but thats how I like them, I don't have to think I don't want to solve puzzles, I want explosions and a way to mindlessly enjoy myself for a couple of hours. Sure maybe it's only entertaining on a "superficial level" but hey Die Hard is a great movie and Quake is a great game.

As far as the art vs entertainment debate goes thats always going to be contriversal, why do games need to be accepted as a "legitimate art" form, especially when you consider that the vast quanitity of all games are commercial realeases, targeted at the consumer, which reaks of an entertainment product to me. I'm not a philospohy scholar but in my view once you start producing something aimed at achieving commercial success it's no longer art but a commodity.

I'm not sure what you mean by genre gamer, I won't lie my absolutely favorite games are all turn based type empire building games (Alpha Centauri, Civilization etc) but I'll play just about any genre. Half Life 2 just left a bad taste in my mouth after playing it, I've outlined my reasons for disliking it,  you can choose to disagree thats fine, in the end we are individuals.

 





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Stryc9Fuego

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #38 on: 30 Apr 2007, 06:20 »

Every game has its problems. For every hugely great moment you encounter in Morrowind, you have about 50 moments where you're all like "Oh, screw you, Cliff Racer... FUCK YOU TO HELL!" For every scenic vista in Oblivion, you have those moments where you're like "Why the hell do I even pay for a horse?" And for every good battle in Half-Life 2, you have the huge load times and bullshit physics puzzles. Who else is tired of piling those cinder blocks on that ramp after every play through? Ultimately, it's a video game. It isn't real life, and there's gonna be aggravation.

A side note to twitch FPS fans: look up Serious Sam. Still insanely fun.

ScrambledGregs

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #39 on: 30 Apr 2007, 08:45 »

You know what game I hate?? Star Ocean 3. Star Ocean 2, which I finally got around to beating about a week ago, has always been one of my absolute favorite PS1 RPGs. Star Ocean 3 FEELS like Star Ocean 2, but everything it adds/changes is just wrong. The whole game itself is an awkward 3D mess that has the same "awful looking dolls" aesthetic that makes the first Xenosaga game look like total ass, but is actually a poorer game because of the battle system. In Star Ocean 2, the battles were in real time, and they were effectively on a 3D plane despite the 2D graphics. Star Ocean 3 is the same, except that the hit detection is unforgiving and too exacting. I never felt that when I missed with attacks or killer moves in SO2 that it was unfair, but I felt like this all the time in SO3. Finally, SO3's story basically squats down and takes a huge shit all over the first two games of the series, effectively employing a Matrix plot twist to make the first two games meaningless. I bought SO3 for 15 bucks and I feel ripped off.
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Ozymandias

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #40 on: 30 Apr 2007, 08:57 »

As far as the art vs entertainment debate goes thats always going to be contriversal, why do games need to be accepted as a "legitimate art" form, especially when you consider that the vast quanitity of all games are commercial realeases, targeted at the consumer, which reaks of an entertainment product to me. I'm not a philospohy scholar but in my view once you start producing something aimed at achieving commercial success it's no longer art but a commodity.

So...movies? Not art?

Books? Not art?

Music? Not art?
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #41 on: 30 Apr 2007, 10:38 »

The thing is, Scytale, why can't a game deliver both? What's wrong with an action game involving a lot of shooting and explosions and running and deaths and awesome action sequences and plot development, mature themes, complexity, ambiguity and everything that comes along with great art? I don't think there should have to be a separation. That's why I used The Wild Bunch. It's a Western and as such there are multiple scenes with shootin' but they're also heavily balanced with scenes that convey a remarkable amount of intellectual depth. Sgt. Pepper is still pop music, but it's such a visionary records that it extends and surpasses the barriers of what pop music was supposed to be about. I'm trying to say that games can be the same way, and that thinking otherwise is what results in stuff like Clover Studio's shutdown.

The "genre gamer" bit was essentially me saying that I really don't like it when people engage themselves in entertainment because they know what they'll be getting from a certain genre. It's not only way too safe, it's a major artistic deterrent. If people like Dean Koontz, Dan Brown and Tom Clancy didn't consistently pump out garbage genre fiction there might be more interest in better novelists. The same is true for video games.
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nihilist

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #42 on: 30 Apr 2007, 10:44 »

JC, I know there is a line to marry you, but I'd like my name put on the list.
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #43 on: 30 Apr 2007, 11:37 »

Uhm, I like Dean Koontz, and the way his stories make me consider alternate possiblities.

As for the rest - meh...
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #44 on: 30 Apr 2007, 11:45 »

JC, I know there is a line to marry you, but I'd like my name put on the list.

You're close to the top because I know what kind of sandwiches you like*.





*they feature "grilled meat"
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #45 on: 30 Apr 2007, 14:39 »

Castlevania X. I recently tried it out, having loved the atmosphere and gameplay of much of the rest of the series, and proceeded to die like 18 times in a row on the first section of the first level.
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Scytale

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #46 on: 05 May 2007, 02:04 »

Johnny, I can see where you are coming from and the short answer for me is there's nothing wrong with it, but I think the reverse rule applies equally well. For every Sgt Pepper's type of album that you enjoy how many other seemingly derivative and less inspired albums do you enjoy.  Not every painting needs to be the Mona Lisa. 

Half Life 2 completely missed the mark in my opinion it lacked the kind of subtly required to pull of a successful multi-genre game. The physics puzzle were so jarring it disrupted the whole flow of the game and destroyed what ever atmosphere the disjointed storyline and the action was designed to create. I know I'm not the only one complaining about this as someone else in this thread has also gripped about things like the Cinder Block puzzles etc. I honestly feel half life 2 would have been a better game had they left this element of it out, especially all the messing around with the gravity gun, the game would have been better served playing to it's strength's, which I feel derive from its FPS roots.

To use your literature example, compare "The Da-Vinci Code" to "Foucault's Pendulum"  theres a remarkable difference in the depths and the scope of the latter. Half-life 2 lacks that kind of serious depth to it, the puzzles are just thrown in as superficial window dressing, it just a cheap attempt at trying to fake depth. I think the developers were more interested in trying to show off their game engine then preserve the games atmosphere.

Compare this to a game like "Zork Nemesis", which is brilliant one of my favorite games ever, that game took an established series, one known for it's silliness and humor and pushed it in an entirely new direction (one they unfortunately didn't stick to with the next Zork game :( ), It combined, horror, with adventure, puzzle solving and complex character development and it had the required subtly to not impact upon the game play, the atmosphere that game had was amazing. One of the few games I've ever become almost completely immersed in.

Of Half Life 2 is insanely popular and has it's fans but I don't count myself as one of them.
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Dimmukane

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #47 on: 05 May 2007, 08:28 »

Well, enough on that then, any other games you hate, Scytale?
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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #48 on: 05 May 2007, 08:42 »

There's only one game I've ever hated so much that I deleted it from my computer. The name of that vile abomination was Icewind Dale II.

I'd been playing a lot of first-person shooters recently, and I was in a mood for a role-playing game. I'd seen snippets of the original Icewind Dale a few years back and liked what I'd seen, but this being the world of computer games "a few years back" means that when I went into the shops it was nowhere to be seen. So I picked up a copy of Icewind Dale II instead.

It started pretty promisingly: it looked nice, it had a good detailed world with lots of stuff you could pick up and play with, and best of all it had a third-person perspective (I don't like first-person R.P.G.s so much, it's a personal thing). But all too soon it became clear that the game was going to fail spectacularly on all of its initial promise. Now, I'm not afraid to admit that I never finished the game - but I did play a substantial amount of it, and it became painfully, excruciatingly clear that the whole game was just going to consist of screen after screen of obscenely linear paths littered with a string of tedious and repetitive hack 'n' slash fights. Again, and again, and a-fucking-gain. I can only assume that this worthless excuse for a game was never play-tested, because nobody in their right mind would have played it and then released it, thinking that they were delivering anything that even remotely resembled an enjoyable or entertaining or rewarding experience. Memo game designers: if you can't think of a better way to increase the difficulty and challenge in a game than just throwing more and more and tougher and tougher enemies at the gamer, maybe you should start thinking of doing something else with your life. If you're so ashamed of the extreme linearity of the pathways in your game that you try to hide them by burying them in pretty landscapes, maybe you should reconsider your chosen career.

Never, ever go near this game. Not unless you find anger and frustration at the idiocy and ineptitude and laziness of humanity to be a rewarding gaming experience.
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ScrambledGregs

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Re: The Games We Hate
« Reply #49 on: 05 May 2007, 19:30 »

You must be the only person in the world who went into the Icewind Dale series thinking it would be anything but a dungeon hack fest. I remember when the original game was released on the same day as Diablo II and everybody ignored the shit out of it. I think the original was a pretty good BioWare style RPG though it was designed from the beginning to be like a more action/dungeon hacky version of Baldur's Gate.

In all fairness, though, Diablo II did it much better, though Icewind Dale is arguably more "sophisticated" because it's based on a pen and paper RPG. Whatever.
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