I ran into a GamesRadar article of [url="http://www.gamesradar.com/f/the-top-7-worst-parts-of-best-games/a-200806161050968082"]The Top 7 Worst Parts of Best Games[/url]. I was surprised to find that I agreed with most of the list, and every single item in it was annoying to me at some point or another.
[quote]http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Water+Temple
2. water temple
A temple in The Legend of Zelda: [Ocarina] of Time, that is widley regarded [by] gamers as a complete pain in the a[color=white]ss.
What are your thoughts on the list above? While I agreed with all of it, I wasn't that bothered by a couple of entries. In the case of the massive waterworld in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, despite not following the "rules of game design" *cough*bullshit*cough*, the point of it was to allow true, open-world exploration. Whenever the player found an island, it felt like a real discovery that would come from being in the middle of the sea. Sure, it could lead to long periods of time where nothing of interest would happen, but that's part of exploration.
Do you have any moments in your favorite games that were just plain bad? Personally, the level in God of War where you have to crawl your way out of Hades was extremely frustrating, particularly when Kratos had to climb a giant-ass tower with rotating blades. Up until that point, God of War was a "10" game to me... but the more failed attempts at reaching to the top I had, the more I'd take imaginary decimal points off. I found out later that I wasn't the only one that hated that part in the game, as Jaffe had said many gamers were frustrated by it, as well.[/color]
Agreed with all but the Blue Shell. I honestly don't have a problem with it, because it's the only one on the list that can be a really good thing if you get it. Oh, and Mass Effect's inventory system is a much bigger deal than slow elevators.
As for my own list, the last couple acts of MGS4 and the double- trilple-boss fights on Ninja Gaiden. Call of Duty 4's worst part is the grenade launcher and claymores. Seriously, why would you put claymores in a video game? Super Smash Bros. Brawl's worst part is the online. And that's all I can think of.
Wow, that list was right on the money. Kinda funny that it included something on Dead Rising's time limits - we were just talking about that yesterday.
The worst part of almost any good RPG is, of course, grinding.
Portal: only being three hours, if not less.
I liked the length of Portal, it's a better alternative to padding a game out for an improved back-of-the-box blurb.
The star in Super Mario Galaxy where you had to throw bob-ombs to blow up piles of scrap metal was aggravating. Not the first one, but the secret second one.
The difficulty was lacking in Shadow of the Collossus, too. I mean, I'm fighting giant rock monsters, on half of them I didn't even die once.
[quote=The X;855423]
The worst part of almost any good RPG is, of course, grinding.
Agreed. Leveling up just for the sake of progressing the story ****es me off. Nothing makes me feel more nerdy than having to explain to my girl friend why I'm still fighting monsters in an area I've already completed, and that somehow it's all worth it in the end. Truth is it usually isn't, which is why I consider it more of an addiction.
[COLOR="Yellow"]Tripping in Super Smash Bros: Brawl. Not quite the equivalent of a blue shell, but if you and your opponent are both on an equal skill level, small little mistakes do make the difference in a game. I have tripped way too many times at exactly the worst possible moments during competitive matches for it to not be an annoying inconvenience. It is. Lame.
Also, the original Metal Gear Solid was too short. Laaaame.[/COLOR]
Yeah, prat falls are the worst addition to just about any game I've played. If only because they're random.
Had a harder time with the first scrap bombing thing in SMG too.
Also, Spyro 2's Escort the Alchemist. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK, that second bomb game took me forever. I'd get so close and **** up at one little spot and yeah :(
Huh, wonder why people found it harder. I must've got real lucky or something.
Getting chainsawed by some little prick in Gears of War online is one of the more aggravating things I've encountered in gaming.
Man, bet you're excited for Gears 2 then!
Agreed with most of the list, especially the blue shell and the 'Cortana' level in Halo 3.
Having to trot on the the horse in Assassin's Creed lest you alert the guards to your presence was annoying as hell. Made getting to cities a pain in the *** before you could just portal yourself there.
[quote] If you somehow manage to play through battles even with tired party members, they'll be unavailable next time you visit the dungeon since they'll be sick.
They'll stay in Tartarus no matter how tired they are on the night before a full moon. Still grindable.
The World Ends With You operates on a similar mechanic - it actually rewards you for taking a break with PP (a form of experience), for up to 7 days. I really need to finish that game, it was pretty great.
Grinding the first stratum of Etrian Odyssey 2 has once again fuelled my hatred of JRPGs, though.
Refueled my hatred of Wizardry. :cookie:
Another worst moment: Fighting Orochi for the third ****ing time in Okami.
Most games' flaws I find charming, but lemme see what I can think of.
First of all, in reference to some things on the list and things has been mentioned here, I enjoy frustrating difficulty in games, as long as it's for a reason. The bomb-scrapping course on Galaxy, for instance, which required some critical thinking as to where to place bombs with your precious time, and the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time, which was a true head-scratching labrynth; they just give me such a great fulfillment when I finally complete something so genuinely challenging. Now, if the difficulty is for a retarded reason, as in when they just have you fight a ridiculous amount of enemies, making it total luck and forcing you to repeat it until fortune favors you, making things hurt a stupidly gigantic amount, or giving you far too few save spots, healing items, ammo refills, etc... those are all far too common ways developers try and add to difficulty.
Boating in Wind Waker I didn't mind, I almost enjoyed it, but I definitely wouldn't argue with somebody who hated it. I'm an extremely patient person who enjoys taking a long, leisurely time and exploring in any videogame, but I can understand how making it mandatory to spend so much of the game doing nothing would ruin it for others.
I think Mario Kart is best with a Blue Shell, honestly. It makes that race for first place even closer, and it's always funny for first and second to be neck-and-neck only to have them both get blown up.
Hm, as for my own worst remembered moments...
The prize for getting all 120 stars in Super Mario 64 DEFINITELY could've been something more fun or helpful. As if they hadn't been basically giving lives away the whole game as it was.
Chance Time in Mario Party games. There are a lot of ways for the rankings to be skewed, but the coins and stars you gain on the board make for a slow-and-sure stockpile, and in the mini-games, there's some skill involved. In Chance Time, the entire scale of the game goes in the ****ter all with one die roll.
Eh, that's all that's coming to me.
[quote=Big Boss;855641][FONT=trebuchet ms][COLOR=yellowgreen]In defense of Japanese RPGs, or at least on one of them, Atlus Persona 3 (PS2) has an excellent way to avoid grinding. Characters actually get tired when they're fighting in a dungeon for a long time, which makes them extremely vulnerable during battle. If you somehow manage to play through battles even with tired party members, they'll be unavailable next time you visit the dungeon since they'll be sick. Plus, since the game's story follows a calendar, only on certain evenings can you enter a dungeon.
Best thing, this game came out just last year in America to many "RPG of the year" awards and such, and an updated version was released just a few months ago. It might be an indication of the genre finally maturing a little in that sense.[/COLOR][/FONT]
There's also Paper Mario. As much as I didn't like the game I'll give it credit for denying you any oppertunity for grinding.
What I don't get is the very easy way to get around grinding is to just remove EXP altogether. I mean, if you want the player's stats to follow a certain curve then isn't controlling it by the amount of EXP that certain monsters give according to stat level a very long and complicated way of doing it? They could just force the curve and have the player's level up after every chapter of story or something. Obviously it wouldn't work that well for western RPGs, they tend to need a punishment for "respeccing" to make character decisions for meaningful. But in JRPGs where the characters are often premade and unmodifiable I don't see what problem this could cause. It would work for Golden Sun and Chrono Trigger, for instance.
Just have it like most modern western RPGs. Make player skill the supreme factor in gameplay. Give enemies level scales... Within reason. Don't want the Oblivion situation where you're getting gangraped by deer even when you have the Daedric Sword of Molten Ownage.
What's the point in numbers that represent character skill if you're gonna gave gameplay centered around genuine player skill? Hell, what's the point in levelling up if everything is always as strong as you are? It doesn't really count as progressing if everything's progressing with you, relative to them you're standing still.
Play Mass Effect and Oblivion and you'll have an idea what I'm talking about.
Eh, I played FF8. The enemies in that scaled with you, I honestly didn't understand the point in levelling up at all.
Every enemy? In Oblivion, it's more like enemies will level relative to you, but only for certain ranges. The final boss isn't scaled at level 1 when you start the game, for instance. And deer aren't going to be worthy opponents at level 100.
Guild Wars stepped away from stat building and put the emphasis on player technique and skill combinations. Once you had reached level 20 your stats don't improve anymore (and you can switch them around in towns with no cost). Instead of levels, you get more skills; making the player's actual techniques the main factor in winning battles, aswell as skill combinations (only 8 skill slots). I liked that system, but I hated how the game became a "fed Ex" simulator; also requireing co employees who didn't know wtf they were doing to tag along. Having a lot of emphasis on player's technique did become a double edged sword when it came to party missions.
[quote=The X;855805]Every enemy? In Oblivion, it's more like enemies will level relative to you, but only for certain ranges. The final boss isn't scaled at level 1 when you start the game, for instance. And deer aren't going to be worthy opponents at level 100.
I still don't see what purpose it serves that a simpler solution couldn't.
I'm pretty sure there's a moment in EVERY game that just drags it down.
As for me, one of the most notable is in Metal Gear Solid 2: Rescuing EE. UGH. As with many games, it's the water part that just infuriatingly blows. In MGS2, for those who haven't played, you have to swim through a sudden, massive underwater maze (that just happens to have mines floating around in it), fight a boss, save EE (Otacon's little sister) and then go back THROUGH the maze swimming slower because she can't swim, and having to come up for air twice as much because she can't breathe. Oh gawd, I hated that part.
And with Zelda, I mostly disagree. It's true, the Water Temple has been what's stopped 90% of my OOT playthroughs, but that's typically because I just don't want to start it. I find that when I actually do the Water Temple, it's mostly pretty painless. It's not that hard. I actually enjoyed the sailing in Wind Waker, and the ocean temple in MM has never bugged me.
But yeah, if I actually thought for a bit, I could come up with hundreds of these moments. On a side note: All the blue shell pictures made me bol.
I love the Game Final Fantasy 6. But the scenario part of it, is horrible I hate it when all your parties are split up.
[quote=Vampiro V. Empire;855882]Read above. Crabs are never stronger than you, but it insures you can't easily overpower guards. If nothing leveled with you there would be no challenge at all, simply because Oblivion is an open world. You'd be a [COLOR=White]go[/COLOR]d before the game is even done and nothing would stand in your way. Plus, the numbers represent goals. Every 25 levels or so a certain skill would gain a new ability, so there was constant challenge and constant progression.
Seriously, it makes perfect sense.
You don't need EXP to create that kind of exerpeicne. In fact, making that work with EXP is a lot of work. That's what I don't get. You don't need constant incremental progression to make the player feel like they're progressing, and you don't need clever EXP systems to stop the player from overpowering guards. But like I said, western RPGs tend to need grinding as a form of punishment for changing your spec/weapon skill/ whatever character-defining stat decisions you make. An EXP-less system would work for many JRPGs that don't have those gameplay elements. Well, at least they would if the fact that grinding is necessary so they can say it's over 300 hours long on the back of the box.
The thing I don't agree with about that though, Speed, is that it takes out the challenge of the harder elements of the game. I think one of my favorite parts of JRPGs, are the things that take a long time to accomplish, like Super Bosses that take a long time to prepare for. This includes reaching your max level. EXP systems don't need to be complicated, neither does stat growth. FFT does it perfectly if you ask me. Sure, there are ways to break it, but with just a little ingenuity, you could easily get around those difficulties.
And on topic: Xenogears. The entirety of Disc II's deliverance is pale in comparison of what it could have been. It's a shame they were rushed on the development of such an awesome game.
RPGs that don't use experience points are rare for a reason. I imagin that, for game designers, it's like trying to change the feed of a winning horse. It's just risky, and unless someone comes up with a really really good substitute that doesn't make gamers think "this is stupid, why didn't they just use experience points?" designers should just stay away from reinventing the wheel. I believe the solution to effectively wiping out grinding involves enemy strength relativity, available spells, equiption, money availability, exc. Levels are just really fundamental.
I do think there are other ways a game could allow a player to increase there stats besides levels that would still be fun, but my point still remains that the effort should go elsewhere.
zelda: lttp right before the first temple in the dark world you have to pay that ****ing monkey. I DON'T HAVE THAT KIND OF MONEY I JUST BOUGHT SOME ******* FLIPPERS
[quote=S
This is true, and I do like that about Fire Emblem, but I also take into consideration that this is the exception and not the rule for RPGs when I evaluate it. I like there to be challenging things that require a lot of prep, and FE makes it extremely disheartening to consider that. If you **** up even once, FE punishes the hell out of you. Which is fine and dandy, but when it comes to things that would push the very boundary statistical system itself, it is unpleasant. Battles with one extremely powerful foe, that lasts upwards of an hour or more (Especially on first try.) is extremely fun to me. Just so long as it isn't based on luck, that is.
And I hate when luck gets involved in FE.
...
The suckest game moment is ummmm,on halo vs with a friend.i was on a wining hit 50 to 2...then as soon as i hit 50 i cant kill my friend i lose a few kill but in the end i won 45 to 44 "it was timed"
Thats the game design. You just sucked. Or your team. It's happened to me.
Worst moment in a great game?
Dante in Devil May Cry 1, posing with Alastor while hardcore music was playing. That was kinda lame.
awesome*
Cheesy fits the DMC games well.
Haven't you played DMC3, Pit? The everything was mad cheesy awesome all over the place.
Yes, yes I have. I understand why 3 is allowed to be cheesy, because the first allows the following games to be like that. However, this is you playing the first game
"hey, this game is pretty cool."
Then he does his 30 second pose, which then I was a little bit embarrassed afterwards for playing the game.
It'd be weird if the first game wasn't cheesy but the rest of the series was.
Naomi's dialogue in MGS4 was the worst thing I found in the game. It was too horrible to overlook considering the rest of the game was magnificent.
seemed befitting enough of her character to me.
The ending sequence to Eternal Sonata. I NEVER ENDS.
The character select screen music in Marvel Vs. Capcom 2.
70% of the time I don't want to play MVC2 is because I'm not in the mood for a fighter... but the other 30% is purely because I don't want to hear that tune.
GONNA TAKE YOU FOR A RIDE!
The whole sountrack was dire. Lounge jazz? **** off
**** you. makoto's stage is one of my most listened to tracks :(
I was talking about MVC2.
Third Strike has a decent soundtrack, though. NYC is great.
oh...****. sorry. I'm an idiot. Thought you were talking about the SFIII soundtrack. The stages are good, but the character select is just as bad/awesome as the MvC2 one.
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