Okay, I understand how this one came about: when the gaming gods were creating the gaming world they realized they had a massive problem bigger than teaching a bunch of apes the difference between "good" and "evil" and what fruit had too many carbohydrates (answer: NOT the gay one). Technological limitations did not often allow for a proper way to save progress in a game. In fact, as strange as this may seem to some of you young hooligans today with your super advanced Walkmans and your Goddamned Power Rangers, there was a time when video games didn't have a save feature at all and gamers had to walk fifteen miles in the snow with shoes made out of tennis rackets just to be able to buy their games from stores. But I digress! Some of the more old school games simply provided you with a code every time you achieved something, like beating a level, and you would have to manually enter it each time you reloaded the game - basically the solution was to allow the player to "override the code" and skip on ahead. The idea of "saving anywhere" for console gaming is relatively new. In fact, saving anywhere was a feature that was exclusive to the PC for a very, very long time. It wasn't until the original Xbox with its (then) massive HDD storage space that developers on the console front really started to push for a save anywhere feature so that we would never have to deal with archaic save points ever again. So why in the hell are we still using save points in this day and age? Save points are a pretty easy way to ruin a gaming experience that could have otherwise been great.
The fact of the matter is that not only are video games growing up, but gamers and gaymers are growing up too. Most of us that started playing games in the 80's and 90's happen to be adults with responsibilities, and as much as we love gaming, sometimes we just have to put games down. Nintendo actually nailed this concept with the design of the DS; not only do certain games include save anywhere features, but Nintendo implemented a hardware option that forces the system to go into a type of sleep mode whenever you close the screen. The DS is an impressive little machine with an enormous amount of attention given to even the slightest details, and that's why it's so incredibly successful. So imagine how great it was for me when I first figured out that if I closed the screen of a DS in the middle of game, the game would stop and wait for me to find it convenient enough to open it again and continue playing where I left off. That's an incredible feature and though it can't be implemented in more complex hardware like your home console, a save anywhere feature is a good second choice; one that should be standard at this point in time.
But you're probably wondering just how this can ruin a game, aside from inconvenience. I'll give a perfect example: Dead Rising. That was a game I genuinly liked but could never finish because the endless backtracking in order to save drove me up the wall. Not only that, but heaven-fuckin'-forbid you ended up being killed after three hours of play if you opted not to backtrack, because then you had to redo the entire fuckin' day again (and listen to Otis complain endlessly about you ignoring his calls like an angry girlfriend). It's all just unnecessary and to me, when I see a game like this on a console with a fully functional HDD it immediately crosses my mind that either the game's programming is sloppy or the game's general design choices are sloppy, and neither is a good impression to leave on a player. It is also, as mentioned, needlessly annoying: if I need to stop and do something, for whatever reason, I simply can't until I find a save point. It's even worse when developers decide to up the difficulty of a game by including either a limited amount of saves or a limited amount of save points, which is just a cheap way of making a game challenging.
Somebody needs to call SA-CURITY on game save points, 'cause bitch need ta' go! It need ta' go!
This one is the bane of my existence. There is nothing more incredibly annoying than having to wrestle a camera in a game just to be able to continue playing. There are plenty of games that are notorious for this, the latest being Disney's Epic Mickey, which although a general turd of a game, it could have been at least less offensive if the camera decided to actually cooperate. I just don't get it: at what point does a game developer decide that reverse psychology is the best way to deal with a bad camera?
Head Designer: "Oh, so the camera is going to ignore our commands? Well, two can play at that game!
Developer #1: "Sir, I don't think that's -- "
Head Designer: "QUIET YOU! If we ignore the bad camera enough it'll feel guilty and fix itself. It's called 'reverse psychology'! You should take a class about it sometime!"
A perfect example of this is Tomb Raider: Underworld. Truth is that Tomb Raider: Legend is an excellent game; it has its share of problems, but still pretty fantastic. The sequel? It's almost completely ruined by a camera system that refuses vehemently to focus on anything other than random walls, patches of grass, or just generally in the opposite direction of the enormous chasm standing between Lara and the next platform. I can't count the amount of times I fell to my doom or the amount of explicatives that followed each and every time. It's really frustrating when a video game's worst enemy is the camera and not a well designed boss.
The worst part is that fixing a camera isn't rocket science: Nintendo and Team Ninja nailed this in Super Mario Sunshine and Dead or Alive 3, respectively. In those games the camera can sometimes swing to the wrong spot or move behind objects, but the obstacles all become semi-transparent when this happens. That's perfectly logical: if there is even the slightest possibility that there could be a wall between the game's avatar and the player, then the choice is an obvious one. So what is it going to take for other developers to catch on?
Don't get me wrong: some glitches have the potential for plenty of "lulz." Nothing is funnier than playing Dragon Age: Origins and listening on as a discombobulated version of Leliana tries to tell you about the dangers of the Brecillian Forest:
And MissingNO. is almost as famous as Lady Gaga at this point, but there are those other glitches that are just game breaking. I'm not talking here about funny things like characters missing faces or floating five feet above the rest of the NPCs. I'm talking about the kind of glitches that erase saves, permanently trap your characters in some kind of alternate dimension where everything is floating in nothingness, etc. Western developers are notorious for this, and amongst the notorious nobody has more notoriety than Bethesda and Bioware. Don't get me wrong, those are two companies that I absolutely adore, but their games just tend to be glitchy as shit. Case in point: I've been playing Dragon Age II lately and as much as I love it there were times where I raged against it pretty strongly. One example involves me fighting a boss and watching as said boss falls off of the platform I'm restricted to and continues to fight one of my party members fifty feet below me where I can't reach him! For fuck's sake, Bioware!
This stems from the PC mentality that western developers have where everything can be patched later. While this is still technically true today with the consoles having online networks, it doesn't really excuse it. I understand that sometimes things slip by the beta testers, but usually the amount of glitches is so large that its almost mind blowing. I am always amazed by the opposite: developers, usually console developers, making games with no glitches whatsoever or very little of them. When was the last time you saw a game breaking glitch in a Nintendo game? That's right, it's almost never! Like it fuckin' should be!
I know that "artificial extension" sounds like something you'd get e-mailed to you in your spam box, usually telling you about miracle pills that can make your junk grow ten times its natural size and put a whale to shame. But hear me out: "artificial extension" refers to game developers that have a knack for extending the life of a game by giving the player bullshit reasons to continue playing. This is one of the biggest offenders on this list (as made obvious by its number placement), because it can take an otherwise excellent game and completely and utterly destroy the pacing. No, Nintendo! I don't want to go collect the seven map spots so I can collect the seven pieces of the three pieces of the Triforce so I can finally face the final boss in Wind Waker. It's just absolute garbage to me that a developer actually thinks that gamers would rather play through a turd section of a game than to play a game that's short.
An example of how length works just fine: Portal didn't need to be 70+ hours long to be good. It was short and sweet and it worked. On the other hand, I raged for days at Wind Waker's Triforce Quest. I was loving the game up to that point, and I still love it, but fuck me sideways if I didn't want to kick something out of sheer frustration. It was just a stroke inducing realization that the only thing standing between me and actually finishing the game was tedium. It wasn't a challenging boss, it wasn't a difficult puzzle, it was hours and hours of wasting time. Explain to me why I, as a player, should waste my time doing these ridiculous quests when there are other, just as brilliant games in my backlog waiting to be played. Games are not like movies; we have to invest time into them and the truth is that investing time always comes down to the question of whether or not it's worth it. When you do garbage that extends the life of a game artificially you are sending a clear message to the players that you just want them to invest more time and get no rewards out of it.
This extends as far as pointless sidequests in RPGs and the whole achievement system Microsoft made famous with the Xbox 360. It extends to cheap enemy A.I. that has a tendency to cheat the player and force the player to repeat a battle or challenge just to make the game longer. It's like when you turn in a paper to a professor and you write paragraphs of fluff and use too many adjectives just to meet a page number requirement. The core of it may be good, but if you're honest with yourself, you'll know for a fact that said core gets lost in all the pointless things you threw in there.
Stop it, gaming industry! Just plain stop it!
"Artificial Extensions" and "Assholes Online." I'm on a roll today! But seriously, this is the number one thing that ruins any and all gaming experiences. I don't mean to call the WHAAAMbulance here but it's really just the worst thing to happen to gaming in a long time. Multiplayer and online play in video games are like Blood Magic in Dragon Age; not inherently evil but often used for the most nefarious of purposes. It's not even the petty insults that bother me; I don't care if a nameless person is calling me a "fag" on the other side of the chat. What really, really irks me is people who make it impossible to play with them. These are the "online assholes" and there are three kinds.
The most annoying one happens to be the elitist jerk crowd, which is composed of the most annoying human beings on the face of the planet. I can't begin to count the amount of times someone raged at me in World of Warcraft because my DPS was 10 or 20 points below what they considered optimum, or because I accidentally used the wrong spell in my rotation once or twice. I understand that a team suffers if someone is trailing the rest, but maybe I'm just a good soldier and, damnit, when you're part of my team I leave no man or woman behind (unless you're an obvious asshole or a Republican, which are coincidentally the same thing! I JEST! I JEST!)! Elitist jerks pretty much ruin everything that can make online gaming experiences fun. Remember that elitist kids? When games used to be fun and weren't your second job? Yeah, so if you're so much of an elitist jerk that you have to /ragequit because one person died, then please go play in traffic.
Then there's the second kind of asshole: the sore losers. These are almost as bad as the elitist ones. They're the ones that quit right before you beat them, the ones that will boot you from an online game if you're doing too well, etc. I can't fuckin' begin to count the amount of times I got booted from a game of Left 4 Dead 2 Versus because I was doing too well.
The third kind of asshole is the one that is just not cooperative; there is a massive difference between people making mistakes/learning to play and people who just don't cooperate with you. To WoW players: honest to God, how many times have you tried capturing the flag in Warsong Gulch only to be ganked by enemies because your team was full of people too lazy to actually stick around with you and protect you? Yeah. Every single time. This is the opposite of the elitist jerk. The elitist jerk wants shit to be downright mathematical and needlessly tedious, going as far as to ruin other people's gaming experience with their constant comments about non-existent numbers. The uncooperative asshole just lets you take the brunt of everything while sitting there and doing nothing. It's just so much fun when a Tank in L4D 2 slams my face into the ground while my team mate who is five feet away from me is staring up at the sky.
And now my blood is boiling...
-_-
- Kharlo -
so true which is why i have started to really hate online games... As for games that have artificial extension, Metroid prime 1 and 2 really have that annoying back tracking just to get to the final area.
ReplyDeleteI AGREE WITH NUMBER ONE! ESPECIALLY IN WOW!
ReplyDeleteIsn't artificial extension the premise of MMOs? :D
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't bother me all that much. One compromise could be to make a lot of the tedious stuff optional in order to get a really cool weapon or ability, but alas, spending one or two extra days on a game in comparison to years on an mmo seems like nothing.
-D