Game Gimmicks That Need to Go

[sideshow]

Well, I decided to finally try to actually beat the old school Ghouls and Ghost games. I succeeded!

Ghost and Goblins is just too hard unless you use the Shield weapon then its possible to beat.

Ghouls and Ghost is my favorite of the three. Beelzebub is really the only difficult boss unless you have the magic ring then he only takes a few hits. Loki is a great end boss!

Super Ghouls and Ghost is so easy if you use the crossbow weapon powered up. The first playthrough is the breeze but fighting those two firebreathing bosses with the magic ring is very hard. The end boss Sardius or whatever he is called is very easy if your patient. Not as cool of an end boss as Loki but still enjoyable.

I've already beat boss Maximo games a while back. Looks like Capcom decided not to have the two playthrough to beat the game style in the Maximo games. Ya it sucks you have to play the older games twice in a row to beat the game but its not all that bad. Next I'm going to try to conquer Ultimate Ghouls and Ghost.

[zzz]

I like tutorials.

Inability to continue against final bosses is stupid. NAM-1975 was FANTASTIC, but you could not continue if your character lost against it's final boss

Obligatory ANYTHING has throughout video game history resulted in poorly executed segments or game play elements.

Downloadable content will only result in a industry where you pay money for a portion of a game that is not worth playing and then have to pay huge prices to get a entire game.

Locked content is totally inexcusable. Secrets are excellent, but paying fifty to seventy dollars and not getting a entire game is not acceptable.

[necromaniac]

Out with the annoying "Game Over! -You can't load a saved game instantly, we need to punish you further by throwing you back to the manufacturer's logos', intro screens and the title menu" (Nocturne and Digital Devil saga, I'm looking at you!)

Also, unskippable cut sequences need to go!
And engrish!
It's 2006 and there are plenty of fan-translators out there with advanced knowledge of the language, hire them instead of the company janitor who wisted Australia once for two weeks.

And less backtracking and Metroidvanias.
Exploration is fun, but having to visit the same locations over and over and over again just to further the plot or something is nothing but lazy design most of the time.
Super Metroid and SOTN did it right, but enough is enough!

[zzz]

I prefer SNKglish to english. No joke.

[necromaniac]

Well, on a good day engrish can enhance your experience by making the game unintentionally hilarious, but often than not it just confuses and gets in way of the story (I, for one relay wanted to know what the hell was going on in Samurai Showdown IV).
And it has killed many RPG's.

[YourAverageJoe]

You know what it is about Burnout: Revenge that pisses me off? The retry thingey. Seriously, you get an "OK" rating and BRONZE and suddenly you have to sit through the OMG U GOT A STAR screen, followed by TWO LOADING SCREENS AND AUTOMATIC SAVING. With no option to retry if you wanna do better! That's just plain annoying!

[shido]

Excusing typical and recycled gameplay with "atmosphere". Too many games today, especially FPS, excusing thier boring and recycled gameplay by saying "that doesn't matter, we have good atmosphere". Having a good atmosphere is nice, no doubt, but can it justified boring and recycled gameplay? From Doom 3 to Call of Duty and even Half Life 2, games like those saying that it doesn't matter if your gameplay has been done thousand of times in the last 10 years, as long as you have good atmosphere. I think it's bullshit. Games like Metroid series or Okami have both unique and interesting gameplay AND awesome atmosphere (much better than HL2 or Doom 3 if you sak me). So why games like Call of Duty can considered to be good by having only good atmosphere? Did we forgot that the most important aspect in games is gameplay? Excusing bad gameplay with good atmosphere is a gimmick that need to go.

[megatronbison]

Gran Tourismo syndrome as I call it:
"wanna play the full game kiddo? no chance! if you want all those cars you had better pass your totally unenjoyable driving test!"
If I just bought the game to casually play I don't want to be punished for not sinking a stupid amount of time into getting what should be available from the start

[The bag of sand]

I hate those damn driving tests!!

[YourAverageJoe]

I used to like them back in GT2, they really helped me get used to the game before the actual game, and the useful tips were kinda awesome. But now with GT4 it's just stupid hard and unnecessary!

[jameseightbitstar]

Seriously, what IS atmosphere (in the context of games) anyway? Seems to me that's just another word fanboys and bad programmers throw around to excuse a crappy game. I mean really, "atmosphere?" Does this game affect my oxygen? Is this game breathable? Will it induce fainting when played at certain heights? So why the heck are some games said to have "atmosphere?"

Seriously, it's almost as bad as "storyline."

[shido]

jameseightbitstar said:

Seriously, what IS atmosphere (in the context of games) anyway? Seems to me that's just another word fanboys and bad programmers throw around to excuse a crappy game. I mean really, "atmosphere?" Does this game affect my oxygen? Is this game breathable? Will it induce fainting when played at certain heights? So why the heck are some games said to have "atmosphere?"

Seriously, it's almost as bad as "storyline."

No no, atmosphere does exist in games. It's created by art design, music and even some gameplay elements. Like good horror games have creepy atomsphere. Or Metroid series having this "loneliness on the deserted planet" feeling. my point is, no matter how good atmosphere you have, if you have a bad gameplay it's a bad game.

And seriously what's your problems with storyline? I enjoyed many stories in RPGs and quests. Some of them are better than most movies, books and anime out there. And plots in games is something different that you can't achieve in other medias. Reading a book about Suikoden 2 plot isn't half good as experience it in the game.

[Deleted]

shido said:

No no, atmosphere does exist in games. It's created by art design, music and even some gameplay elements. Like good horror games have creepy atomsphere. Or Metroid series having this "loneliness on the deserted planet" feeling. my point is, no matter how good atmosphere you have, if you have a bad gameplay it's a bad game.

And seriously what's your problems with storyline? I enjoyed many stories in RPGs and quests. Some of them are better than most movies, books and anime out there. And plots in games is something different that you can't achieve in other medias. Reading a book about Suikoden 2 plot isn't half good as experience it in the game.

I agree with everything, except that I'm not into RPGs overall.

Anyway, storylines when done right, makes great games like Snatcher and Gyakuten Saiban/Phoenix Wright.

[YourAverageJoe]

A good example also would be F.E.A.R.'s overall creepiness, with bloody faces coming up at select places, that one scene where you swim in blood, and that one time you get pwnd by a little girl.

[wyrdwad]

I think the perfect example of a game that seems low-budget, but still manages to be noteworthy almost solely BECAUSE of atmosphere, is the PS1 title "Clock Tower" (Clock Tower 2 in Japan). That's still my favorite survival horror game of all time, solely because of three things it did exceptionally well:

* One villain, period. One supernatural entity who's hell-bent on killing you. There's just something VERY creepy about having a murderous stalker, as opposed to wave after wave of zombies or what-not.
* Long periods of time where nothing happens. You can literally go for 45 minutes or more in Clock Tower without Scissorman popping up even once... and then, suddenly, you'll look at a painting on the wall, and he'll JUMP OUT OF IT, narrowly missing you with his freakin' huge garden shears! Nothin' makes something more scary than a false sense of security. (:
* Choice of weapon. The fact that Scissorman wields gigantic garden shears, and likes to threateningly open and close them as he walks, means you can HEAR HIM COMING... so if he's already chasing you, that distant "shing, shing, shing" really makes your escape all the more urgent.

Subsequent Clock Tower games haven't managed to achieve this nearly as well (Clock Tower 3 pretty much sucked, in fact), though the PS2 game "Haunting Ground" came fairly close -- and the addition of the dog made it all the better, with the dog's low-pitched growling whenever the killer was nearby being almost as scary as the "shing, shing, shing" of scissors, and the "panic mode" effects really heightening the mood. If only the killers didn't show up as often, and jumped out of unexpected places more than just a handful of times, Haunting Ground would've been perfect!

But yeah... in conclusion, atmosphere can really make or break a game. Especially a survival horror title.

-Tom