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Instant and irrational turn offs in videogaming

I forgot the most instant and most irrational one for me: character designs by Akira Toriyama. Unless the main characters are slimes.
 
I hate "magical" looking shit from anime games. Actually, I despise anything and everything that has some resemblance to anything modern Japanese.

Example: in Super Mario 3D Land, there is a short cutscene just before you enter a level that has Bowser in it. The drawbridge falls down, and Mario enters the door that is in the shape of Bowser's head. When Mario enters, the eyes on Bower's head light up, and you can hear it make a "to a power level 99!!!!" sound.

Another example: when you unlock a new world, the gray question cube disappears. As it disappears, you get the same effect as I described above.

I am so far removed from typical Japanese shit nowadays that it bothers me even when the resemblance is purely coincidental.
 
The "Greatest Hits" copies of PlayStation games. I don't want a copy of the original Uncharted in some ugly red box. I want the original release box. I ordered Burnout Paradise PS3 from EA, got the Greatest Hits copy of it and immediately sold it. Another instance was when I ordered Heavenly Sword, got the normal box but the disc had the red Greatest Hits label on it.
 
I really don't like games that try to be dramatic but just have the most insufferable one-note characters and dialogue that's almost word-for-word from Saving Private Ryan but worse. The best example I can think of is Killzone 2, where right at the start you ride a stupid flying carpet down to a planet and one of your guys yells out "THIS IS FUCKED UP!" Oh, word? That guy dies halfway through the game, or maybe it's one of the other ones, but his death scene was like a checklist of war movie cliches: "Don't you die on me!", "Medic!", "Morphine!", "Live goddammit!".

I also have a problem with the way Rockstar directs their cutscenes in recent times. I noticed it in GTA IV but it was particularly egregious in RDR: they all just trail off awkwardly. What usually happens is your player character is a boring stick in the mud who never learnt the "Yes, and..." technique, so when he meets NPCs in the game who are more flamboyant or animated than he is he just shuts down their bit immediately and every scene just ends with the NPC going "Oh- oh..." and kind of tottering off. In Red Dead Redemption every character you met was super weird but Marston was resolutely grounded and serious and it was like all the other characters in the game were playing to a brick wall. Every single cutscene is so stilted and lifeless because of this automaton you play as, whose only trait is "Grr I vant money" or "Grr ah want mah wahf 'n' chahld".

And having to clack the stick left and right in a QTE. I don't mind most QTEs much - I can press a button if you want, multiple times if necessary - but I draw the line at having to wiggle the stick left and right. It fucking sucks. It's literally the worst controller input a developer can require from you. You have to take one hand off the controller and mash it all over the top of the stick, it uses way too many muscles for a stupid QTE in a stupid game, and I just don't do it any more. I bought Dead Rising: Case Zero to see if I'd be into the series and the first time I got grabbed by a zombie the game wanted me to do that. I didn't, so I died. I started again and the same thing happened when I got too close to a zombie. This video game where you play as a gentleman in the middle of ten bajillion zombies forces you to smack the analogue stick left and right EVERY FUCKING TIME one of them grabs you. Fuck that. Fuck that so hard. Did nobody playtest that game? Did nobody sit down and play for thirty seconds and say "Fuck me running, guys, you've gotta change this because I just want to find the nearest gun and get that shit right in my mouth"?
 
Dudebro character designs
Gritty military games
western developed big-budget games
Motion controls/Kinect
Casual/Cellphone games
Randomized dungeons (though I liked Dark Cloud 2)
anything Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings (this includes stuff heavily influenced by them, aka 99% of all western RPGs)
 
The "Greatest Hits" copies of PlayStation games. I don't want a copy of the original Uncharted in some ugly red box. I want the original release box. I ordered Burnout Paradise PS3 from EA, got the Greatest Hits copy of it and immediately sold it. Another instance was when I ordered Heavenly Sword, got the normal box but the disc had the red Greatest Hits label on it.

Oh yes. Will not buy a game that's in a greatest hits box.
 
The "Greatest Hits" copies of PlayStation games. I don't want a copy of the original Uncharted in some ugly red box. I want the original release box. I ordered Burnout Paradise PS3 from EA, got the Greatest Hits copy of it and immediately sold it. Another instance was when I ordered Heavenly Sword, got the normal box but the disc had the red Greatest Hits label on it.
You think the Greatest Hits boxes are bad? Imagine getting something like this:
OxmEU.jpg
 
MISSABLE stuff

you didn't turn left 10 hours ago and pressed that button?
sorry but theres no way you can get "item x" now your fucked

tons of RPG's have the crap
 
1) Everything is invincible (in terms of performance, not HP bar going down) until it dies.
2) Sometimes a move affects you... this is usually an unstoppable grab or instant-kill animation.

Sure, some shooters have hit detection, so you shoot someone in the leg and they go through their "ow my fuckin leg!" animation for like 2 seconds, but then they resume 100% battle function until they die. I think both player and enemies of all types need to have more dynamic and sometimes lasting reactions to how they are being hit. I wouldn't mind getting thrown back 10 feet if I didn't brace myself and a dragon hit me.

Though, I think this kind of thing is most needed for any large creature. It doesn't make sense for me to hack away at its leg and not see that leg's performance decrease. Then, eventually it suddenly dies altogether from being hit in the shin many times? No, just no. Same for other games where you shoot them many times until they suddenly die, especially if they are taking explosive damage without losing chunks of their body.

We have the technology. Dead Space shows that it is entirely possible. Developers just need to stop being lazy in these aspects of combat. Bethesda themselves have touched on it with Fallout, but I think Skyrim was designed more to the RPG style than Fallout, closer to glorified dice rolling, not as much at it's core an adventure game as it might appear to be.

Fucking this! I really hope next gen doesn't repeat this gens trend of same old game from two gens past just w/purdy grafix!

Why is it too much to ask for realistic area damage and the AI compensating?
I fucking hate someone dying because I shot them in the foot/toe three times or sniped their hand. It's lazy and makes for boring gameplay.
 
When was the last time you saw a trailer with metal in it?

Didn't one of those Dragon Age trailers have like Marilyn Manson music in it? I remember that being an instant turn-off for me. It just didn't fit the game at all.

Edit:
Dark Octave said:
I never understood this from Alan Wake. Is this Bruce Willis with hair? What's going on here?
I have no idea because I haven't played the game, but it looks a bit like that Remedy developer who gave his face to the first Max Payne.
 
"Personality" driven art direction.

FF IX
Wind Waker
Bayonetta

Unplayable simply due to character designs.

This is me as well. Also add Okami.

Beyond that children in JRPG's. I don't need a fucking crying child that will never shut the fuck up traveling with all the characters that are almost 20 or over. God I fucking hate this.

Moe.

Western Games.

Silent Protagonists.
 
Games that have iron sights in them that aren't actual iron sights, so the gun will centre but it will be below the middle of the screen and a cross hair will pop up over the gun.
 
oh yeah... greatest hits boxes are an instant turn off... honestly if any game i havent played turns greatest hit... i just forget about buying it... because i hate the redone boxart
 
The "Greatest Hits" copies of PlayStation games. I don't want a copy of the original Uncharted in some ugly red box. I want the original release box. I ordered Burnout Paradise PS3 from EA, got the Greatest Hits copy of it and immediately sold it. Another instance was when I ordered Heavenly Sword, got the normal box but the disc had the red Greatest Hits label on it.

Yeah, I can't stand them either. Though it's even worse for us PALs, as SCEE like to throw yellow and silver on the Platinum covers to make them as fugly as possible.

I'm not sure what the discs are like nowadays, as I haven't bought one in years, but the shitty disc art pisses me off even more than the cover art. It's like they wanted me to put my blank looking RE2 disc in solely to check whether it was Leon or Claire's scenario.

Similarly, I fucking hate the ugly generic font SCEE uses on the spines of games. They've been a bit more lenient this gen, so some publishers (like EA, Square Enix, Take 2, Sega and Warner) use their own stylised logos or fonts but why standardise such a stupid thing in such a stupid manner?

You think the Greatest Hits boxes are bad? Imagine getting something like this:
[/uglymasseffectpcbox]

PCs benefit from no-cd patches though. No need to even look at the case then.
 
I thought I was one of the more open minded individuals around until I started playing a copy of Magna Carta 1 that I got pretty cheap.

I just couldn't get over the design of the male lead.
I have beaten games starring some of the most feminine, flowery guys to ever be designed, but Magna Carta is where I hit the wall.

That being said, Hyung-tae Kim is quite good at what he does.
 
Sports games automatically turn me off. *looks up* Greatest hits too! ^^

But the real gaming turn off is when you're starting a game, you're hyped, and then you realize that your controller's batteries are dead and you have zero left.

This and buying Metroid Other M at launch just to see that your Wii isn't reading double layers properly.
 
Anime like this I'm fine with, if someone walked in and asked "hey, whatcha playing" and saw this I wouldn't be too embarrassed.

1129992-persona_4_screenshot_super.jpg


This however...

208951-3.jpg
 
Snow levels in platformers. Especially that era when almost every platformer had the snow level and the water level. I'd just groan when they appeared and usually turned it off.

Except for Voodoo Vince.
 
The “Tank-DamageDealer-Healer”-System in MMOs

Also an MMO problem for me. Mostly all MMO work with the basic RPG-System of Tanks, Damage-Dealer and Healer. Its an easy system: Tanks protect the group of monsters, Damage-dealer kill them fast and Healer make sure everybody stays alive. One of the three classes makes an mistake or doesn't works properly and the party fails. MMO difference thus classes into different smaller classes and give them some kind of fun gimmick to make them interesting. Every MMO since Everquest works this way and its just boring to me right now. I want an MMO with a different system: Card Games, Pokemon, Pikmen-Units, 1st Party Shooter, Doging and Planing, just something different.

To much space in MMOs

I hate it, because it happens in all modern 3D MMOs. Rooms, citys and mostly everything is designt to fit many people in one place. Which means that there is always a lot of space in an area in which the characters just look very small. Its even more annoying, that there are rarely any details to find and everything looks like an storage area. Which it actually is by design. An storage area for characters, NPCs and Mobs. Thanks to this, places never seen realistic, existing, meaningful and copy'n pasted.
I know that you have to design places bigger then in reality for an 3rd camera perspective or it looks wrong, too. But I thing most level-designers dont know the right balance of too big and too small. It also gives to the feeling of an adventure, that's not designt for you alone. What is also right. But in a game, the player should always feel that the world exists only to tell his story. Magic comes through illusions.

Cities_4_1_Teaser.jpg

cityOfHeroes.jpg

Star_Wars_The_Old_Republic_05.jpg
 
Small Text = Damn near a deal breaker (PC Devs turned Console Devs, I'm talking directly to yOU!!!)

Small Character on screen = Instant NO Buy

Slow Moving Character = Deal Breaker unless you can upgrade speed

Status Quo end Credits = Just Annoying. I have always felt the end credits is the Dev's chnace to leave a lasting inpression on the gamer. It's a wasted opportunity if not taken advantage of IMO.
 
- Overarching plot with JRPGs being eclipsed by a billion different other subplots/themes, diminishing the importance of the main story in general

Interesting that you should say that. I also dislike it, and found an old interview with Square translator Ted Woolsey in Super Play magazine (http://smc.smallcave.net/woolsey/superplay.php) where he comments on this phenomenon:

Q: Aside from the basic difference in languages, do you experience a lot of problems when you're dealing with distinctly Japanese cultural points or cultural references?

A: Oh yes. And a lot of the problem lies with the basic expectations of the gameplayer. Japanese RPGs come from a textual background; from short stories, Manga and novels. In Japanese literature, typically, the need for a strong beginning, middle, and end is not that great. The Japanese tend to savor the episodic elements of an adventure; brief jaunts off on sidequests which bear no relation to the main game are welcomed in Japan, but here in the US - and I guess in Europe too - players tend to react like 'Now what was all that for? What a waste of time!'. So in some ways it's difficult to translate a game that was designed for the Japanese market because the gameplayers themselves are very different - it's not just that they speak a different language.
 
Over-use of voices that accompany attacks in games, and as a subset any really annoying voice acting that comes with those characters. I just won't buy the game if I see it anywhere.
 
Lack of Windowed mode. My desk is too small/my monitor too big to make full screen playable if i want to use a keyboard (as I find it hard to focus on the full screen) plus I like to keep an eye of things while playing.
 
The “Tank-DamageDealer-Healer”-System in MMOs
I've always thought it one of the sadder realities in gaming that Pokemon would easily make the greatest MMO of all time if converted to realtime battles and given a detailed world with Pokemon in the wild with all their unique behaviors and whatnot. I mean, just the first part of realtime battles would be incredible with the system they have, but the world would be incredibly immersive and unique.

That said, you mentioning this reveals another issue in MMOs, that every challenging battle is either a swarm or a massive beast. Where are the small tactical teams? Something that actually requires observing carefully and responding to weird stuff they do? Something that uses creative status effects, not just the inverse of buffs?

To much space in MMOs
I know what you're getting at, but about that second screenshot, you need a lot of room to put your awesome hero powers into practice. I didn't mind the space at all in Champions Online.
 
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