But seriously uh, my favorite game this gen is probably Bioshock so for that i'd say that I wish it showed Rapture before everything went to shit, like in it's hay day (I know Bioshock 2 did this somewhat but still). I hope there's a part 3 that takes place as a prequel.
I know that's not really a complaint but meh. Bioshock is so damn amazing it's hard finding something legitimate to hate on. People say they didn't like the end boss but I thought it was fitting and made sense, but I guess in retrospect it is a little abrupt and feels too cliche 'video gamey' (knock enemy out 3 times) compared to the rest of the enemies/gameplay in the game.
If you can't find things to hate about Bioshock, then you aren't trying very hard. Don't get me wrong; I actually like the game, but it took me 3 attempts to actually get into it. I could go into why, but as I'm not the game's biggest fan, this isn't the place for it.
vid said:
Rez:
Wow, way to go, you forgot to texture the entire world.
Let's take a mute protagonist, make characters engage in awkward one-way dialogue with him in a vague attempt to add personality, and then railroad him along some of most linear, repetitive levels in gaming history.
Oh wait, let's add tedious physics puzzles that a 5 year old could solve to lengthen the game, and generic vehicle sections that have the same piece of level geometry copy pasted over and over. Look what we can do with our amazing source engine!!1 Our airboat is so realistic!
Let's not forget to add in a chick who shoots guns because we know all gamers need to project themselves onto Gordon Freeman as a nerd who is getting girls. Mix in some garbage writing that you cannot skip to add extra length.
Don't forget: absolutely no explanation as to where the other alien lifeforms from the first game went or an explanation why the Vortigaunts are suddenly good guys who now all speak English and all sound like Louis Gossett, Jr.!
And who is this Wallace Breen guy? I don't remember him from Half-Life 1, but apparently he ran the entire Lamba Facility. Isn't that strange? And these scientists look familiar, but I don't remember them having names in the first game. Come to think of it, they were generic character models and there were multiples of all of them! I'm just supposed to buy a retcon that huge?
And though you talked about it, I would be lying by omission if I didn't also mention the really awkward ways Valve tried to characterize Gordon. He is almost a non-character, simply a player avatar, and yet I'm suppose to accept a developing love story involving him? HE NEVER SAYS ANYTHING. EVER. I feel actual embarrassment during those scenes.
icarus-daedelus said:
Deus Ex is dated and clunky in every way. Ambitious ideas are constantly crippled by terrible shooting mechanics, awful graphics, and laughably bad voice acting. It lacks both the focus of a well-designed linear game and the breadth of a truly open-world game, instead choosing to give you a wealth of options to use against shitty AI while micromanaging your inventory, skills, and augments. (These all slow the pace down to a crawl, as if I weren't unengaged enough already.) Don't even get me started on the story, which is a bunch of conspiracy theories thrown in a blender with amateur philosophy 101; the result is a silly rip-off of The X-Files in video game form. And damn, the Hong Kong street music SUCKS.
I feel dirty. Think I'm going to take a shower and lie down now.
- Everything's recycled. Graphics, music, NPCs, sidequests, everything's ripped from OoT. Even the horrible framerate is still here despite the expensive expansion pack.
- Three-day cycle is just annoying. There's just no point to losing your items and having to store rupees in a bank. All your progress is gone when you reset, meaning you can't truly solve anyone problems in sidequests and there's no sense of satisfaction. Doing the sidequests over and over is a pain anyway, I had to beat the mountain boss, blow up the boulder, and win the friggin' Goron Race again to get the golden powder just because it was the third day by the time I finished all that crap the first time and the blacksmith was gone.
- Only four dungeons? Really? Ocarina of Time had TEN! And don't tell me to go do sidequests, Zelda is about dungeon design, not fetch quests for NPCs. I don't care how many happy smiley marks I get on my kiddie notebook, I want to fight Stalfos.
- No new weapons. This is a BIG DEAL in Zelda games. You don't even get the Megaton Hammer. Don't even think about mentioning masks, 90% of them are only useful in one specific situation.
I can't agree with anything in this post except the bolded. Forgot how little actual dungeons there were since there's so much awesome, non-dungeon shit to do in the game.
Nintendo, you totally should have had more dungeons than OOT in this game. for shame.
AGRO. AGRO. AGRO. First off, your horse never obeys any of your commands. When on foot, it will never fucking following you until you start mashing X to call it back. Taking a good 5 seconds to respond, and then gather speed, and then eventually reach you, the whole process is arduous and could have been avoided if the bastard would just follow you everywhere. When it does eventually sidle up next to you, to mount it you have to press triangle a dozen times before the shitty controls eventually register.
Continuing on this note, some would call the controls "an exercise in art". In reality, it's more like "an exercise in enduring shit being unresponsive". Whenever you do an action in SotC, it takes a good half second before anything you want to do happens on screen, be it moving, swinging a sword, grabbing colossi pube etc etc. Most of this is down to the abysmal framerate which averages in the single digits (and also seems to jump all the way up to 60fps at odd intervals to further confuse the player). If this was art, it would be a Jackson Pollock painting with added shit.
Then we come to the fact that it takes absolutely fucking ages to get anywhere in the world. You get all pumped up to fight the next colossus only to find out there is a 20 minute trek of monotony ahead of you, plus getting lost for 10 minutes because the laser sword doesn't work everywhere, and as you can see the visual design of the map is impractical as fuck. There are no other intermediate enemies to fight along the way (except some wildlife that is too fast to bother with), no badass background music to ease your travels, and in general the entire game just looks grey and uninteresting like this:
Which brings me to the graphics. Okay, so there may be a vista or two that makes you say "oh that's nice", but most of the time things fall to pieces up close. The world is bathed in TOO MUCH FUCKING BLOOOM, making it near impossible to see anything in the distance. Most of the time whenever people are talking about how SotC is truly artistic, they are a) looking back with rose-tinted glasses, b) are referencing some piece of concept art they found on Google that speaks to the inner soul yet looks absolutely nowhere near as good as the actual game, or c) haven't played Okami.
Finally we have the story - not just any story, but a love story. The way it is conveyed is as follows: for about 90% of the game we are drip-fed some pretentious bullshit in made-up moon language, while wagging our heads pretending we know what the fuck is going on. Then in the last 20mins of the game the bomb is dropped and all our base belong to Ueda - we get mindfucked and have to resort to a 5000 word thesis on Gamefaqs to try to make sense of it all. There's also some bible references in there if you think that makes the writers smart (Dormin = Nimrod, mind blown games are art holy fuck).
Finally we have the story - not just any story, but a love story. The way it is conveyed is as follows: for about 90% of the game we are drip-fed some pretentious bullshit in made-up moon language, while wagging our heads pretending we know what the fuck is going on. Then in the last 20mins of the game the bomb is dropped and all our base belong to Ueda - we get mindfucked and have to resort to a 5000 word thesis on Gamefaqs to try to make sense of it all. There's also some bible references in there if you think that makes the writers smart (Dormin = Nimrod, mind blown games are art holy fuck).
I can't agree with anything in this post except the bolded. Forgot how little actual dungeons there were since there's so much awesome, non-dungeon shit to do in the game.
Nintendo, you totally should have had more dungeons than OOT in this game. for shame.
Demon's Souls sucks. It's a sloppy, unfair game that pretends to be "deep" when it's really just badly explained. It should be clear from the nonsense title (how does "Demon" have so many souls?) how poorly conceived this game was.
Take the plot. There's nothing there. You're a guy going to a kingdom infested by demons. There are demons. You kill them. That's it. There's a little about the history of soul magic and the monumentals and stuff, but the characters are never explained at all. There's no history, no intrigue, no surprises. It's just boring.
The unexplained "plot" is as threadbare as explanations of the game mechanics. What is World Tendency? Character Tendency? I don't know, and the game hides it in riddles. Who knows how it changes, but apparently it's required to get most of the interesting weapons in the game. Nice going, From. Are you just trying to make people buy strategy guides? If you can't get the interesting weapons, you're just limited to a selection of samey-looking medieval armaments. The same sort of obtuseness applies to things like the use of boss monster souls too.
And what happens if you mess anything up? The game is constantly autosaving, so it just punishes you for any mistakes you make. Stuck in battle against a cheap enemy that one-shots you all the time (why would you put something like that red-eyes knight in the starting zone?)? Lose all your souls, which you need to buy things or level up. Make another mistake? You can't recover them. Hope you didn't use any healing items, or you'll be even worse off then you were when you started. And there are no checkpoints in the levels, so you just wind up losing progress due to bullshit death traps like rolling boulders or exploding lights or pits or whatever. And the worse you do, the harder it is to succeed. It just bleeds you dry of resources. You even have less health after dying the first time in a world. What's the point of that? Why would the game force you to be at half health almost the entire time you play it?
It can get even worse. Use the Red Hot Demon's Soul to get currency? Congrats, you can't upgrade magical weapons at all for the rest of the game. Even though the game doesn't tell you anything about that at all. If you don't like it, start over. And man, I hope you don't disturb Thomas. An errant sword swing, and you won't be able to stockpile items ever again.
Design that hates the player that much has no place in games in this day and age.
Having just finished a 2nd run through of Castlevania: Symphony of the night the games terrible secret has been revealed to me, hint: It absolutely sucks!
- So we begin playing the final stage: Bloodlines.....hang on a second here, final stage? well I just wasted my money.....oh it's the final stage from the previous game you say? well why should I bother playing Rondo Of Blood when this game has spoiled it for me anyway, this game is already ass backwards
- What is this voice acting? a miserable attempt at drama but enough talk, me ears are offended! (see what I did there? no? what do you mean no?!)
- To reiterate the first boss is Dracula who is also the last
- And following this the somewhat manly Richter Belmont is replaced by the girly man Alucard, well that's fine no one wanted to play as a badass anyway!
- Death is a bit of a prick, here I am just starting out and getting accustomed to my abilities and then he just waltzes in and magically suctions away my powers, oh lovely we are setting up a fetch quest for items I already had!
- The game craps on the CV fanbase by turning their beloved tricky platforming series into a poor mans super metroid filled with lots of corridors and rpg elements, as if the game wasn't easy enough you can even grind to success which is the complete opposite of the entire series thus far.
- Medusa heads are still the scourge of players everywhere however.
- If for some masochistic reason you are going for full map completion have fun trying to find all the rooms."Run through a big rock as the wolf and bat back and forth and maybe this random doorway will appear with no fanfare in the left corner of this room!".......WHAT? why would anyone do that? why are there breakable walls that can only be spotted if the fairy familiar points them out and who is using a fairy when they can use a freaking skull, bat or demon?
- Related to the above the game doesn't tell you that the fairy can find these walls, the game doesn't tell you any of your special moves, the game withholds useful information from you for no real reason.
- So you made it to the castle top, defeated the now evil Richter only to get a bad ending, so lets go through a bunch of extra fluff to get the good ending only then does the game reveal its filthy secret, they took the map, flipped it upside down and slapped on another 2 hours of game! Lazy does not do this point justice.
- The inverted castle itself is just silly, the rooms weren't designed to be traversed this way so enjoy turning into a bat every 10 seconds. Also the same piece of music plays in around 70% of the inverted castle and it is easily one of the weaker pieces of music at that.
- Inverted caverns, oh ho ho! still going for map completion? well the game expects you to use an exploit to get it! Absolutely shocking game design.
- Alucard shield and shield rod is more than game breaking, it's game OBLITERATING! fortunately the trick to this like many things in the game isn't explained at all. in fact this game is full of ways to overpower yourself, Castlevania kids edition right here!
- And to wrap things up this game is 2D! on the PS1! pffft, ridiculous how behind the times the chaps who made this game were, those of us with an N64 laughed heartily with the clearly superior and 3D castlevania 64!
Super Mario Bros. is a terrible game. Besides starting the game off with one (not very super-looking) midget instead of the brothers like the game's name suggests, I'm only given the option to walk left or right in a rigid, two-dimensional fashion. That's not even starting on how I can't backtrack left if I get too far right of the level. So much for exploration! A seems to be jump, though I have no idea why I'd want to be jumping this high in the first place so I just stick to the ground, walking right until a pixelated mushroom man starts walking up to me. I try to walk up to talk to him, but all that happens is my character looks at the screen, does a 'Yay me!' pose and jumps off the screen. Cue two more times and apparently I've already beaten the game with one of the dullest ending's I've ever seen; 'Game-Over'? God, I'm glad we never see this 'platformer' shit in this day and age.
Or has this joke already been done to death now in this thread
On a serious note, I guess you could legitimately complain that say, Mario Galaxy's trial galaxies weren't very good or the generation before Resident Evil 4 didn't have much to do with the series (though that'd meant jack all to someone who's first game was RE4, like myself). Oh wait, here's a game a few geneartions before those I love that I'll concede has quite a few things going against it.
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest is a terrible game. Firstly, the character who gets top billing in the title isn't even playable! I don't care if this is meant to be Diddy's game or some sort of psuedo-call back to Donkey Kong Jr.-but-now-with-googly-eyed-pirates, this is already starting off pretty piss poorly.
So you start off on a giant pirate ship, with absolutely no explanation how you got there, or anything resembling a level intro. Don't go expecting any either; you'll just be treated to a black screen and then with a boring black-fade out, suddenly your monkey's have made their way to the beginning of the level. Maybe we were meant to be impressed by all the shiny new pre-rendered shit in the mid 90's, but I was playing this in '00; far too exposed to the raw power of the N64, PSX and Dreamcast to have my judgement clouded by such parlor tricks!
My mistake, forgot there was this single screen with a floating map. My point about this game having a poorly executed plot is entirely void now!
I play through this first level and it's pretty typical, run of the mill 'run and jump' gameplay. Oh wait, scratch the 'run' part; this game is slow as hell and the closest I've seen to moving fast so far is rolling into an enemy (and I can't for the life of me make out how this roll works) or riding around on the rhino, and god knows what something like that is doing here. I finish the level with a stupid level target (for trying to lead a rescue mission, Diddy and Dixie are certainly quick to drop everything and have a jam session while Kaptain Obese-Reptilian-Final-Boss-You've-Probably-Fought-In-Every-Game-Ever is probably jamming fire crackers up DK's ass).
It doesn't seem like the kremlings had particularly thought through their getaway after kidnapping DK if they sailed what seems like a brisk swim away from his home island, in plain sight of pretty much anybody and everybody who would feel compelled to curb-stomp them.
The map screen is alright; it seems to give more context to where these levels are taking place in relation to one another, but as I played on it's pretty grating that somehow there's a school, a museum, an airport and a tv studio your retarded Kong family members seem to have established long before you ever got there, and as you play the game you'll find they have these venues all over this island. Why the hell are you even bothering to go on a 'Kong Quest' to save DK if Cranky supposedly lives right next door to where he's being held captive? That's not even starting on how pointless all these Kong members are; Cranky just calls you a dumbass whenever you visit him, Wrinkly will ever offer to sell you information you can just as easily find in the instruction manual or save your game (let's forget we have to pay to save our games now, apparently), Swanky will ask you the same series of questions regarding shit only the most obsessive of players will of noticed while playing the regular levels and Funky manages to beat even Wrinkly in forcing me to pay for services that ought to be entirely free; flying back to levels and worlds I've already beaten! No idea why DK, Diddy or Dixie haven't cut ties with these freeloading assholes.
Cranky not only seems to vehemently hate and ridicule his own flesh and blood, he also appears to hate Link to the point where even Yoshi is taken more seriously than him. (He does seem to be onto something we wouldn't realize for another 5 years concerning a certain hedgehog, however)
If you keep playing the game all you'll be treated to is a laundry-list of platforming tropes that probably 'look' new and exciting at the time but are probably the same exact scenario's Mario did eons ago without the coat of shiny paint, or without the occasionally bizarre collision detection problem. (If you managed to beat one of those bramble levels without once losing a life by touching a prickly vine you were seemingly nowhere near, congrats on having a better time with the game than I did). It's a classic text-book case of archaic game design and I think the fact Nintendo has never even vaguely alluded to the series' existence or characters, let alone ever returned to these games is telling that it's not worth your time and if you do you're probably a fat stupid westerner who probably favors graphics over gameplay and I and probably hate you.
Oh, and that apparently amazing sounding soundtrack people won't shut up about? Can't argue there, but it'd be hard to when it sure does soundfamiliar!
The stuff about the Kong family members largely being useless and pretty dodgy at times collision detection I will agree are very legitimate complaints, but I still can't bring myself to hate this game. Not sure if it's nolstagia (since I replayed DKC1 and decided I didn't particularly care for it anymore) but I still place this game next to Yoshi's Island, Chrono and Super Mario All-Stars as my all-time favorite SNES games. Didn't rag on the music too much since I honestly can't fathom how you'd begin to criticize the DKC series' soundtrack.
Also for the record, none of this was meant to be a slam against jarosh who wrote a probably far more informed critique of DKC (and DKC2 a bit) here than I attempted to, even if I don't personally agree with him.
Even if you manage to look beyond the very dated graphics and horribly antiquated interface, what you find is a whole lot of reading and little else. The battle system is the usual oblique, boring D&D affair -- even the developers seem to have realized how bad it is, giving you the option to skip battles most of the time. How you ask? Text of course, nothing awesome happening in this game.
Your character is predefined and you don't get any real customization options, just rows and rows of numbers which may lead to even more text. What's worse, he is an unattractive grey blob lumbering about the bleak vistas of the game -- which is almost entirely confined to a single city! The story is a mess and fails to grab the player with any kind of epic quest or adventure, and the final encounter is a huge disappointment consisting mostly of -- you guessed it -- reading.
One important area of modern RPG design is romance, and here again PST falls flat. The main romantic interest is dead, and one of the alternatives does not allow for a physical relationship due to some vague lore reasoning. Why even bother?
I would suggest that anyone who worked on this messy mishmash of ideas closely study the likes of Bioware, who know how to weave an engaging, action-packed tale of swords, sorcery and love for the current generation of gamers.
So is this a bitch about the bad parts of your favorite games kind of thread? If so:
BATTLETOADS (NES):
Create a game that for the time looked fantastic. Potentially the best graphics the NES had to offer. Also insert appealing TMNT-style characters with fun moves like enlarged fists and boots. Make it multi-player so you and a friend can play together. Include many stages with a lot of variety, so each level feels like a different experience. Then make it so damn hard you'll never see past level 3.
F-ZERO GX:
A brilliant, gorgeous & challenging game. But let's either forget to play-test story mode or intentionally make it so throw-your-controller hard you'll infuriate everyone. I did beat it but I think I felt more ashamed I spent so much time on it than accomplished.
WIND WAKER:
Ey, ya know what this game needs? More sailing. Are we behind schedule in development? Let's just toss those last triforce pieces in the ocean instead of dungeons. No one will notice. Oh and let's make the game ridiculously easy for no apparent reason.
MORTAL KOMBAT (360):
No matter how good you've gotten to this point, Shao Kahn and Shao Kahn only will kick your ass. Forget your combos and fight strategies, run away and spam projectiles or perish.
RoboRally sucks because it is basically a defunct game and billions of people will never know it's awesomeness. It is also unlikely to ever become a video game because there's no money in it at this point.
I'm sure if someone else mentions this game, they'll rant about the bloody save system. It creates an unnecessary punishing atmosphere. I had no problems with the Dead Rising I saving system, so this says something.
Secondly, tying the random encounters to Ramza's level can be ridiculous, especially if the player uses Ramza's buffing moves incessantly. Since XP is based on action, Ramza would usually be a level or two above anyone else.
Lastly, a lot of the guest characters were overpowered. I personally love creating my own teams (dungeon crawlers too!) but injecting T.G. Orlandu into a fight simply ruins the difficulty. I chose not to use him, and cringed in fights that he was a required guest.
Although this game might be the pinnacle of tactics-level RPGness, there are a lot of rough edges commonly associated with Matsuno's work.
Even if you manage to look beyond the very dated graphics and horribly antiquated interface, what you find is a whole lot of reading and little else. The battle system is the usual oblique, boring D&D affair -- even the developers seem to have realized how bad it is, giving you the option to skip battles most of the time. How you ask? Text of course, nothing awesome happening in this game.
Your character is predefined and you don't get any real customization options, just rows and rows of numbers which may lead to even more text. What's worse, he is an unattractive grey blob lumbering about the bleak vistas of the game -- which is almost entirely confined to a single city! The story is a mess and fails to grab the player with any kind of epic quest or adventure, and the final encounter is a huge disappointment consisting mostly of -- you guessed it -- reading.
One important area of modern RPG design is romance, and here again PST falls flat. The main romantic interest is dead, and one of the alternatives does not allow for a physical relationship due to some vague lore reasoning. Why even bother?
I would suggest that anyone who worked on this messy mishmash of ideas closely study the likes of Bioware, who know how to weave an engaging, action-packed tale of swords, sorcery and love for the current generation of gamers.
AGRO. AGRO. AGRO. First off, your horse never obeys any of your commands. When on foot, it will never fucking following you until you start mashing X to call it back. Taking a good 5 seconds to respond, and then gather speed, and then eventually reach you, the whole process is arduous and could have been avoided if the bastard would just follow you everywhere. When it does eventually sidle up next to you, to mount it you have to press triangle a dozen times before the shitty controls eventually register.
Continuing on this note, some would call the controls "an exercise in art". In reality, it's more like "an exercise in enduring shit being unresponsive". Whenever you do an action in SotC, it takes a good half second before anything you want to do happens on screen, be it moving, swinging a sword, grabbing colossi pube etc etc. Most of this is down to the abysmal framerate which averages in the single digits (and also seems to jump all the way up to 60fps at odd intervals to further confuse the player). If this was art, it would be a Jackson Pollock painting with added shit.
Then we come to the fact that it takes absolutely fucking ages to get anywhere in the world. You get all pumped up to fight the next colossus only to find out there is a 20 minute trek of monotony ahead of you, plus getting lost for 10 minutes because the laser sword doesn't work everywhere, and as you can see the visual design of the map is impractical as fuck. There are no other intermediate enemies to fight along the way (except some wildlife that is too fast to bother with), no badass background music to ease your travels, and in general the entire game just looks grey and uninteresting like this:
Which brings me to the graphics. Okay, so there may be a vista or two that makes you say "oh that's nice", but most of the time things fall to pieces up close. The world is bathed in TOO MUCH FUCKING BLOOOM, making it near impossible to see anything in the distance. Most of the time whenever people are talking about how SotC is truly artistic, they are a) looking back with rose-tinted glasses, b) are referencing some piece of concept art they found on Google that speaks to the inner soul yet looks absolutely nowhere near as good as the actual game, or c) haven't played Okami.
Finally we have the story - not just any story, but a love story. The way it is conveyed is as follows: for about 90% of the game we are drip-fed some pretentious bullshit in made-up moon language, while wagging our heads pretending we know what the fuck is going on. Then in the last 20mins of the game the bomb is dropped and all our base belong to Ueda - we get mindfucked and have to resort to a 5000 word thesis on Gamefaqs to try to make sense of it all. There's also some bible references in there if you think that makes the writers smart (Dormin = Nimrod, mind blown games are art holy fuck).
Fallout 3 fucking sucks so much and I'm sick of hearing people say it's ten times better than New Vegas.
- First, let's take a game series that has strong writing and excellent player-based situations. You are initially given A, and you can do A if you really want to, but A, B, C, D, E, F, and G are possible and equally weighted. Or just be a slaver mercenary and shoot genitals and children. Just interact. Evidently, that open ended atmosphere was too much and we need a BIG PLOT. So the player is now a forlorn son sent in to a nuclear wasteland, intent on finding him. Could've been big. Could've been layered, with piecemeal hints here and there, with no real conclusion, a figure to force you into unknown and unclaimed territory. Instead, you're playing "Fetch the GECK". Go here... and listen to all of my convenient audio recordings. Go here, and do a few quests for some friends so they'll tell you where I JUST WAS. Go here, and actually listen to my retroactive instructions. If your dad is so goddamn smart and secretive and intent on your well-being, the motherfucker couldn't have set up a messager of some kind?
And we're not even going to talk about the half-assed conclusion to such a half-assed story. Give me that generic voiceover with little no specific discussion of what I did and whom I met! Give me that COMPLETELY BACKWARDS final decision! Give me a fully operational mega-robot and interconnected military complexes in a wasteland!
- Your idea of choices in dialog is the equivalent of Bioware. Have a high speech skillset? Evidently being a happy converser will solve every problem with any NPC ever. How many times were quests outright solved or shortened drastically because you met the requirement for the Speech Challenge?
- Ubermensch: Just how many perks and skill bumps can you handle? Because 3/4ths into the game you will be untouchable. Doesn't matter if you didn't learn medicine or science or repair properly, you can almost max all three and have plenty left-over.
- Morality and quest writing: Uhm, show me ambiguity in any case besides Oasis and those vampires. Show me. Binary choices are booooorrrriiiiinnnnggg.
- Edit: Enemy variation: lol
Really loved a few of the quests though, and the writing is great when associated with Vaults. And VATS with FPS is god-tier of a great idea.
Magicka is one of the worst games of this year. It has a fun premise, you are a wizard that can combine 8 different elements to cast different spells. You can conjure an arcane beam filled with lightening or shoot a boulder that freezes your enemies. And it has co-op! And it's supposed to be funny. Sounds like fun, but the execution is terrible.
Why?
With those 8 elements, you have a lot of possible spells at your disposal. Sounds like there is a lot of room for experimenting and finding the right spell for the right situation. right? Too bad there is one combo that can decimate almost 99% of the enemies, so you won't need anything else. Only a few enemies can resist the arcane-steam-lightning beam of death. Every chapter is essentially the same: bunch of enemies enter the area, kill everyone with arcane-steam-lightning and go to the next area etc. Bosses? Use the same tactic. Couple that with cheap enemies that instakill you and the gameplay is pretty dull. But it gets worse
Magicka is filled with bugs and is in general unpolished as hell. Thinking of opening the Steam overlay during a loading screen? Crash. Use a certain spell combination too often? Crash. To you want to retrieve the sword from your friends corpse that you need for an achievement. Whoops, it glitched and you cant pick it up. Want to retry a challenge map? You can't, the only option is to disconnect. I had to retry a section multiple times because there was an enemy offscreen that I needed to kill. Reaching a certain boss in online play would crash everyone but the host.
I've heard the first few weeks were nightmarish. Online play was impossible. Some people couldn't even start the game without being booted back to the desktop. How the hell did it get released in this state?
The make matters worse, the online system is terrible. If you are in game and someone crashes or disconnects, he cant rejoin. If he wants to rejoin, you have to go back to the lobby. And then you meet flaw#121984 of the game: the checkpoint system. The game only saves in between chapters.
Did you crash at the end of a chapter or got to frustrated to play any more? The game spits in your face and forces you to redo the entire chapter. Within a chapter, there are checkpoints. But the checkpoints are too few, which makes the singleplayer a nightmare. Have fun playing the same 15 minutes over and over again. Especially in the later chapters, where a lot of enemies can instakill you. And don't think of giving up, because then you'll have redo the entire chapter. And after everyone is dead, it takes way too long before the Game Over screen comes up.
So the gameplay is dull, it's full of bugs and glitches and is frustrating in general. But we still have Magicka's humour. Which consists of referencing other games, movies and even memes, just to show you how creatively bankrupt the game is. Oh and there is a guy called Vlad, who looks and acts like vampire, but tells you everytime he's totally not one. Hilarious...
Metroid Prime sucks - it's labelled as a first person (adventure) game but you play in third person as a ball for some parts, it's a mediocre shooter and far too dull to be an adventure. The game doesn't progress the series and it's a failed exercise into adapting a 2D series into 3D. A poor person's Halo with a less interesting story and less action. Your character may as well be a robot, we don't get any sense of history or personality. It's set on an alien planet, with a bounty hunter but still manages to disappoint.
The composer had fun with the music but it is un-Metroid, an attempt show off rather than do anything appropriate or sci-fi. The music is ambient because it's not worth listening to and white noise would have been better. When they do decide to put the music at the forefront, it ruins any tension, subtlety is something you won't find.
A sluggish, mute bounty hunter who loses her powers and gets hurt if she touches a bug. It's like controlling RoboCop, actually it's worse because you don't hear any cool lines. Samus doesn't need to speak because she'd just remind you of another take on the formula of find and kill the space jellyfish. The absence of story is masked by scanning which gives you a false sense of exploration. You might as well get a notepad and pen while you play the game. You can't move and shoot, instead you get coloured doors.
Space pirates are fragile like glass, they are always exploding or die after a couple of shots. You can lock onto enemies (if you are lucky, you may see more than one at a time) they won't follow you through the doors, normally have a giant weakspot and you can scan them multiple ways. The visors are a waste of time which you only need to use once or twice. I'm surprised there isn't a 'finish the game for me' visor. If you are really stuck just use the power bomb which kills everything and ammo is always nearby. You can attract missile and health by charging your weapon. The map tells you where to go, there are hints, you can happily swim in lava and keep your health. You will always find checkpoints and save rooms are often close by. The game isn't challenging at all.
The hidden upgrades make a noise if you are nearby and usually are placed behind a wall which has cracks on it - that's if they aren't staring you in the face. There is no fire boss but you have an ice beam which is stupid. If you do manage to find the upgrades to get the more powerful beams they drain all your missiles, that's a great way to reward a player. You get missiles but they look more like squiggly lines, that's the (lack of) attention to detail you get. You shoot to open doors and they open immediately, give or take 30 seconds.
You have to enjoy the scenery because you are walking so slowly you won't find a good game so just stand and stare at a tree. Where was the screw attack, speed boost or Kraid? Oh yeah, that would have been too much fun. You lose all your abilities and have to collect them but only get the best items near the end of the game. You have set pieces of fire, ice, water and plant-y and music to match, just to make it easier for you. You won't find any surprises, everything follows a pattern and the mystery is ruined because you are told everything when you scan stuff. The freedom of exploration is to go forward, then go back, forward and back again.
Oh Tie Fighter, how you fail me. let me count the ways
-Why does my ship have a terminal velocity? I'm in space. I should be able to go as fast as I f-ing want so long as I can wait long enough! no wonder space sims are a dead genre, they never existed in the first place. put a nice forest background in place of the stars and this game would be crimson skies.
-why do my instruments explode when my ship takes damage? no other videogame i've ever played has actually decided that as a penalty for playing badly you must be permanently crippled. and if my radar goes, i may as well just restart. are you just trying to make me feel the loneliness and precariousness of life in space? wtf?
-why are the only effective weapons against capital ships the big bombs that have less effective range than a high school punter? was this to guarantee that players would degrade themselves by parking within yards of a star destroyer's engines in order to destroy it? i don't remember that scene in the movies.
-whose idea was it to put a tractor beam on a tie fighter? i mean seriously, you made the tie advanced too good for human players to actually catch and destroy, so you needed to cheat? and how come enemies never used tractor beams on me in this way?
-why are the secret mission objectives so obnoxious? they rarely added to the fun, being just an extended homework assignment to go scan a few more freighters or kill another flight or two of a-wings.
-seriously? that's the best darth vader impersonator you could find?
This post is meant to be written and read circa 1999
Ultima Online. WoW, where do I get started? It desecrates the great Ultima franchise just by having the word in its own title. Ultima Online, you say? So I should expect what I loved while playing the Ultima classics, but ONLINE? Sounds fantastic! Just kidding, its diarrhea! Let me start with how it starts (or attempts to start). This shit will take forever to patch when you first start it up. I hope youre also ready for a patch next Tuesday because it is coming and it will bring new bugs! Willow Smith hasnt even whipped her foetul hair back and forth yet she already has more redeeming qualities.
Socially, the list of things that can go wrong to you AT ANY MOMENT are endless. Most people are assholes in the real world but everyone becomes Hitler-level assholes in UO. Dont play this game unless you want whatever innocence/patience/goodwill/you-name-it you had get taken away for good. It will not only crush your faith in online gaming but humanity in general.
Lets take, for example, right when you create your character and choose whatever-the-fuck skills you want. Like it matters. You start off in a random town with nothing but the clothes on your back, some scissors, a couple pieces of gold, and if youre lucky, an empty fucking spellbook. Immediately, some seemingly nice fellow introduces himself to you; Hi, I see you are new. Heres a box with some stuff to help you get started. Wow, cool, thanks man. I really appreciate it! You open the box and it fucking explodes in your face. You die within 5 seconds of starting the game. The now-not-so-seemingly nice fellow is bowing around your body; a crowd surrounds your body looking for loot. NOOB this guy sux, he doesnt have anything even the guy with 12 chickens following him makes fun of you. You page for the games support and after 15 minutes of sitting as a ghost near your body someone appears: Sorry for the inconvenience but we cannot assist you. If you need to get resurrected, go to the healers. He teleports away before you can reply with a thanks, dick.
Gameplay wise, its a disaster. The learning curve is through the roof. Oh and God have mercy on your soul if you didnt begin when the game first came out because you have ZERO chance of catching up to those veterans. There isnt much armor or weapons to collect; weapons have a 5 tier-system of Crap to Invulnerable, Vanquishing Crap. You have to basically craft everything, which means your first have to spend hours sitting in a fucking mine doing nothing but clicking on rocks or walking through the forest clicking on trees. The game isnt fun; its a chore. A frustrating, endless chore. There are no quests, no missions, you just do whatever you want to do (which usually means figuring out how not to die). The graphics are bad; the demon has some dark pubic hair around its vagina? The sound is terrible; the noise a deer makes EVERY THREE SECONDS sounds like a car horn from the 1920s. Unless you have the fastest 56k modem around, lag will be a constant problem. Even with a great modem, the servers constantly crash. And they even timewarp; yes, all that mining you just did for the past 3 hours NEVER EVEN HAPPENED.
Oh lets not forget the monthly fucking payments, shall we? Of course you have to first purchase the game but then you also have to cough up $10 a month just to be able to play it! If you buy and play this game for a year, simply financially you have lost $150! And what do you have to show for it? A larger waistline, shorter temper, faithlessness, and carpal tunnel syndrome. $150 wont even cover your medical and psychiatric bills.
I could really go on and on but why waste the effort? I have read on several websites that many expansions are in the works and even a UO2 could come out in the next few years. Hopefully, the expansions help me from getting killed by everyone every single minute. A sort of safe-land would be ideal. New items and skills would be cool. Something like dinosaurs or samurais!
The specific area of 'suck' that I wish to focus on is the game's broken online mode.
Gameplay
When a match begins, all the kids will rush to get a vehicle. If their favourite is taken by a faster player, then you often see the occupant getting betrayed because the little shit thinks he can do a better job (note the -2 in the above screen). The most popular, and by sheer coincidence the most incredibly annoying vehicle in Reach online, is the Banshee - if a person on your team has one of these, and isn't retarded enough to fly too low, then your team will win the game. It is pretty much that simple when it comes to this overpowered piece of nonsense.
Of course if you miss your favourite vehicle that you felt you were somehow entitled to, there are plenty of others to choose from - far too fucking many in fact on most of the maps. Take the above map for example, Hemorrhage (so called because it will make you rage) - in this map each team has: 2x Warthog, 2x Mongeese, 1x Ghost, 1x Wraith and 1x Revenant. If you could see the heat maps for Hemorrhage, it's pretty much just a strip of red along the middle where all this shit just collides together. Fun. Basically in Reach, vehicles fuck the infantry game up more-so than any other Halo game yet. You will have zero fun unless you decide to stick to smaller gametypes on maps with fewer vehicles.
Of course the usual Halo weapon balance problems still plague the game. Before you ask - yes, the pistol still sucks, stop asking Bungie to fix it. The new king of overpowerment has since been the plasma pistol (now made more annoying in Reach because half the games you play are only with Elite equipment). This fucker can render vehicles temporarily useless and drop your shields in one charged shot (you even get cheevos for using this noob tactic). You might think "but surely this fixes the vehicles problem!". WRONG, it just turns the game into a one shot kill vehicle vs infantry clusterfuck. More terrible design decisions are explosive weapons like the rocket launcher and pulse rifle which are capable of homing shots, a completely useless assault rifle when compared with the DMR, and a shotgun which kills in one shot at close range.
But wait! There is one more thing to ruin this game aside from vehicles and shit weapons - armor lock. This genius invention makes you invincible for a short period of time while the enemy all gawp at you like idiots. This shit pretty much broke the game because virtually all encounters go like this:
- shoot dude until he's got low health
- dude goes into armor lock
- wait for lock to run out, Darth Maul style in The Phantom Menace
- when dude pops out of armor lock, try not to get in the way of the EMP blast that will actually level the playing field in his favor
- beat his ass down
- do all of the above while avoiding getting shot/maimed by other enemies
Graphics
Wikipedia says: "Temporal anti-aliasing seeks to reduce or remove the effects of temporal aliasing." What they don't say is that it also makes you feel drunk while playing.
Extra features
Have a 4GB console? LOL, you are going to be shit out of luck if you want to play half the online features of this game. Allow Plywood from the Reach OT to let you know what you are missing:
Plywood said:
No file share.
No downloading anything from anyone elses fileshare not even off of bungie.net.
No theatre/films.
No firefight online co-op.
No Campaign co-op.
No matchmaking pictures(as in the picture of the playlist).
Finally, here is an actual screenshot taken using the Halo: Reach file share. The first thing you notice is not the nice cinematic composition or the pretty visuals, it's dat jpeg compression. I'm honestly surprised that people didn't make as much of a stink about this as they did about Forza 3. Other shitty community 'features' include having to pay extra Allards to render your saved films on Bungie.net, minuscule online file storage, and the typical matchmaking/NAT problems that plague big name console online games nowadays.
