The Nag Thread

[pinball22]

 

Walking off the edge of that mound at the bottom will kill you, but jumping off of it won't. Why?!?!?!?! Shouldn't these video game characters know how to step down?!

 

I immediately had that complaint when I first played Jumpman as a kid... one of my friends said "Well, he is called JUMPman."

 

I actually tend to prefer games with training missions -- seems like the quickest way to get used to complicated controls. There are definitely some that are too hand-hold-y, though.

 

I'm definitely with those of you complaining about long reload times, though -- if I've just died in some difficult level, I want to do it again right then, not wait a minute for some long death scene and reloading.

[Reaperman]

I hate doing something just to have it undone in the following cutscene.

 

last night I started playing Siren, the first mission involves avoiding a zombie cop's bullets. It took a couple tries, but eventually I got it right and successfully completed the mission just to have him shoot me in the following cutscene. was the point simply to give me a feeling of helplessness or futility? It was so pointless that I gave it up.

Edited February 4, 2010 by Reaperman

[roland p]

Running out of bullets in a clip in any FPS. Unreal Tournament '99 did it right.

I had the same issues with Silent Hill Homecomming. You can collect all quantities of bullits, but once they're in your gun, you can't reload until you've fired all of your bullits. And reloading takes time. So I often wasted the last bullit of a clip, then reloaded before attacking an enemy.

[Devbinks]

My biggest nag would have to be cut-scenes that you can't skip and invisible walls. Oh, do I hate invisible walls...

[Almost Rice]

Many racing games fall into this catergory in that they force you to outfit your car based on a certain amount of cash you start. It should be optional or required in a career mode, but a quick-race option should always be present.

 

I agree. I play NFS(If forgot which version) on the PS2 and I love just starting track and playing a few times. None of the configure cars, money, or long term strategies please.

[Vic George 2K3]

Levels that are so annoyingly difficult you'd swear they were made exclusively for emulators.

 

Or how about bosses that take a ridiculous amount of damage to do them in, you'd rather kill yourself than keep flinging pebbles at these Goliaths.

Edited February 5, 2010 by Vic George 2K3

[shadow460]

Two. Words.

 

ESCORT MISSIONS

 

Play the control room mission in Goldeneye where you gotta protect Natalya. On 00 Agent mode that is perhaps the toughest mission there is. James can survive it easily, but it seems that after only two hits Natalya falls dead. It's not always obvious when she's being shot, either. She won't say something until after at least one hit. IMO, this mission is even harder than the Aztec one.

Colony Wars does good with escort missions. You can fail several and still get the best ending in the game. Command & Conquer games do OK. In many of their escort missions you have a number of units to protect but so long as any one of them survives you will win. In others, though, you have only one unit that you have to guard, and sometimes that unit winds up being your main fighter so you really have to be careful.

[4Ks]

Here are my biggest gripes with games:

 

Level-Up Grinding: I might like RPGs more were it not for this flaw. The developers of RPG games don't seem to realise that it isn't fun to have to spend 3 hours defeating foe after foe just so you can level up enough to beat some boss or herd of enemies that just happen to be blocking your way. I'm looking at you, Dragon Warrior.

 

Super-Ultra-Mega Tough Bosses: Remember how much fun it was the first time you ran into a boss so incredibly, enormously, impossibly hard that you knew you didn't stand a chance of ever getting past it? Oh, that's right, it wasn't. And unfortunately, this is the most common of the problems I'll discuss.

 

Lack Of Save Points: A game that would be just pleasantly difficult can be made controller-crackingly frustrating if there aren't enough save points. It's never fun to finally make it past that tough level but die on an even tougher level, and then find out the hard way that the game didn't save.

 

Insane Difficulty: Nintendo owners will definetly know most aspects of this one well, as it pretty much sums up most of the NES's game library. Some games seem to have been created under the impression that everyone has developed god-like reflexes, mastery of joypad ninjutsu, and can execute complex moves on the fly with a 10+ button controller. Tell me that sounds like fun with a straight face.

 

More Moves That You Can Remember: No fighting/wrestling game is complete without 20 different moves for each individual character. At least, that's what most people think. Some games, like N64's Banjo-Kazooie, manage to have just enough moves to serve each task without getting out of hand, but then some games have so many different skills that they have to have a reference sheet to keep track of them all.

[Lendorien]

Oh. So many pet peeves here. I totally agree with the mandatory training modes.

 

And for RPGS, one of the biggest game killers for me, like 4Ks said, is level grinding. There are a few games that have done an outstanding job of making the leveling grindless, making the enemy fights part of the story, instead or random, etc. But by far, jRPGs STILL still are huge culprits of this crime.

 

Another one for me is fixed save points. It's becoming less common these days, but boy, I hate that. There's nothing worse than playing for an hour, dying and then having to replay that entire hour again. If you have limited time to play games, this becomes an exercise in frustration.

 

Someone else mentioned it, but here's another for me. Clipping bugs. I was playing Mass Effect 2 last week. I got to a place where somehow, my PC got stuck on top of something through a clipping bug. It forced me to replay 30 minutes of game time because I hadn't saved.

 

Oh... and another peeve. Patching. I'm sorry, I started gaming back in the day when you got your games on disks and there was no internet. Games had to be well tested or it was a disaster for the game maker. People didn't buy the game. I can think of a few games that had that issue.

 

The internet has made developers lazy. I'm not talking about "oh, we didn't anticipate this GFX card would be used with this GPU." problems. I'm talking about buggy gameplay, glitches, etc. Things that should have been addressed in proper QnA. The attitude these days is "Get it out, we'll fix it later, if our publisher lets us." I HATE that!

Edited February 9, 2010 by Lendorien

[MagitekAngel]

Here's another one: Rubber Banding. This is where, if you beat the computer, it responds by ratcheting up its skill level to game-breaking cheapness, and utterly ruins your asshole next level/match/fight. After it beats you into the ground, it then senses you need a hand, and then dumbs itself down to ridiculous levels of failure, so that when you beat the computer the next next round, it snaps back to Kintaro-level bullshit difficulty.

 

The early Mortal Kombat games were notorious for this. F-Zero is also a notable culprit - if you drive slow or stop, the other cars slow down. If you get way ahead (on the higher difficulties at least) the cars speed up until they actually drive faster than your maximum speed.

[cybercylon]

To be honest when I saw this, I thought this was going to be a thread about spouses nagging their other about taking up too much house space with game collections

Edited February 9, 2010 by cybercylon

[MagitekAngel]

To be honest when I saw this, I thought this was going to be a thread about spouses nagging their other about taking up too much house space with game collections

 

I imagine that those discussions would require far more space than what any one lowly thread could offer.

[Multijointed Monster Maker]

Games where enemies are born over and over again after you killed them...

 

Or stuff like: kill an enemy, move 2 pixels backwards, move forward, there he is again!

 

I just love it when games do that.

[Rik]

I HATE stealth missions in PC games.You know,where you have to avoid being seen by guards or by the security cameras

[mbd30]

I HATE stealth missions in PC games.You know,where you have to avoid being seen by guards or by the security cameras

 

I take it you're not a MGS fan.

[4Ks]

I HATE stealth missions in PC games.You know,where you have to avoid being seen by guards or by the security cameras

 

I take it you're not a MGS fan.

 

 

Or Splinter Cell.

[mbd30]

Lack Of Save Points: A game that would be just pleasantly difficult can be made controller-crackingly frustrating if there aren't enough save points. It's never fun to finally make it past that tough level but die on an even tougher level, and then find out the hard way that the game didn't save.

 

This is a frustrating aspect of the first "Crash Bandicoot". God help you if you save your game in a tough level and then don't manage to complete it. That means you still must keep playing through that level every time until you reach the next save point. Very annoying and ramps up the difficulty factor a great deal. They made the Playstation sequels much more user friendly. The original is for those who like a challenge.

Edited February 9, 2010 by mbd30

[Rik]

I HATE stealth missions in PC games.You know,where you have to avoid being seen by guards or by the security cameras

 

I take it you're not a MGS fan.

Most games I've played just have 1 stealth level in the whole game,so that's not bad,i can handle that.WHAT is MGS BTW?

[mbd30]

I HATE stealth missions in PC games.You know,where you have to avoid being seen by guards or by the security cameras

 

I take it you're not a MGS fan.

Most games I've played just have 1 stealth level in the whole game,so that's not bad,i can handle that.WHAT is MGS BTW?

 

Metal Gear Solid

[4Ks]

I HATE stealth missions in PC games.You know,where you have to avoid being seen by guards or by the security cameras

 

I take it you're not a MGS fan.

Most games I've played just have 1 stealth level in the whole game,so that's not bad,i can handle that.WHAT is MGS BTW?

 

Metal Gear Solid

[JamesD]

Auto save point (singular). Um... yeah... you just saved my game and I don't have the required weapon or ammo. Now I have to do the entire level over because I can't just back up to a previous save point. Stupid developer of the year award.

[MagitekAngel]

I do appreciate an autosave feature, when it is used in tandem with a manual save feature.

 

Losing all your health and stuff sucks: Shadow Complex always keeps me guessing as far as how much health and how many consumables I'm going to respawn with when I inevitably get killed (I refuse to play on anything but Insane difficulty, perhaps because I like getting reamed by my games).

 

But then there's Oblivion and Fallout, which use both manual and automatic saves. Perfect. If I screw up and sell or lose a unique item, no big deal, I can bypass the autosave and go back to my last manual one. But if I get rocked three steps into a dungeon and forgot to save beforehand, no problem: the autosave will spit me back out just inside the door.

[Rik]

I HATE stealth missions in PC games.You know,where you have to avoid being seen by guards or by the security cameras

 

I take it you're not a MGS fan.

Most games I've played just have 1 stealth level in the whole game,so that's not bad,i can handle that.WHAT is MGS BTW?

 

Metal Gear Solid

Oh yeah! That's one of the very few games i haven't tried.But if MGS indeed is a stealth laden game,then i wont even bother!

Edited February 10, 2010 by Rik

[mbd30]

I HATE stealth missions in PC games.You know,where you have to avoid being seen by guards or by the security cameras

 

I take it you're not a MGS fan.

Most games I've played just have 1 stealth level in the whole game,so that's not bad,i can handle that.WHAT is MGS BTW?

 

Metal Gear Solid

Oh yeah! That's one of the very few games i haven't tried.But if MGS indeed is a stealth laden game,then i wont even bother!

 

I think MGS is the game that popularized an emphasis on stealth in video games in the first place.

[Kripto]

I have this belief that the player should just be able to click start a few times and get to actual gameplay very quickly. I just thought it would be fun to mention that this morning I was going through various games in the SNES library when I played one that would have gone straight into gameplay, but the default choose above "Play Now" was "Get Advice" ( I kid you not... ).

 

After clicking that I was shown a super-long text and still graphics presentation which could not be stopped or skipped, short of powering down. Awesome!