Games you wish had less of an impact

[kitten]

Bring the hate.

I will probably contribute to this thread later, but I'm really anxious to see what discussion this can unearth.

[Bobinator]

Harvest Moon.

I can see why people would like them, and I normally wouldn't mind, but the series basically turned Natsume from a company known for awesome stuff like Wild Guns, Pocky & Rocky and Ninja Warriors, into a factory churning HM games out like crazy. About the only thing they've made that really stands out besides Harvest Moon was Omega 5, plus some other, mediocre games for the Game Boy Color, but that's about it from them.

[kal]

Halo / CoD

Regenerating shields/health is one the worst things to happen to gaming in a long time. Not because the mechanic itself is bad but because it almost totally killed off health packs and health management in way too many genres. It leads to such lazy level design and while I appreciate that health regen is a great mechanic SOMETIMES - it's too often used.

In the same issue they've led to a horrible case of FLASHY GIMMICKY SET PIECE EVENTS (particularly CoD) that has also found its way into far too many titles.

[Weasel]

Gears of War. Okay, a lot of people think it "created" the cover-based shooter. In fact, I'd sooner call WinBack or Time Crisis the first "real" one - and Gears of War didn't even do it that well. I end up taking cover behind the wrong shit, or accidentally stopping cover, or accidentally running when i didn't want to. Kill.Switch did it better with a hold-button instead of a context-sensitive toggle.

Whenever a game comes out that uses a cover system, the more mainstream outlets are quick to point out that it's a Gears of War clone. God damn it, quit with that shit - even the original Uncharted, which is far from the best at that sort of thing, did it better!

[kyouki]

Immediately a couple of games came to mind:

God of War
I'll blame this game for quicktime events (since Shenmue probably had zero impact). QTEs are possibly one of the worst things ever to come along and I can think of no reason to have one in a game. They are either things you should just be able to do in the game normally (Bayonetta's QTE after the first boss where you have to jump from one platform to another), or they are things that are better off just being noninteractive cinema scenes (the QTE battles in RE4/5).

FFIV
I'm gonna cheat and use my entry for "which games do you wish had more of an impact" and reverse it here. I think FFIV paved the way for the ultralinear "town->cave->puzzle boss->repeat" JRPGs that were so prevalent on the 16- and 32-bit consoles.

[derboo]

Mostly obvious ones.... Diablo, Symphony of the Night, Shenmue (assuming it was indeed the reason why "all" action games now are infested with quick time events), Dune 2, probably more if I think longer.

EDIT: Whatever game started the flood of dual analog stick indie shooters (those where one stick controls movement direction and the other bullet direction, directly).

[kyouki]

SOTN was a good one, I should have listed that as well.

[KeeperBvK]

Why Dune 2? I take it you simply don't like RTS as a whole?

[derboo]

I don't like that they "killed" TBS.

As for RTS... I've had enough of them after half of BroodWar.

[retr0gamer]

Fucking Monster Hunter! I can't play a japanese portable game without some kind of grinding for experience of items involved!

[Deleted]

May 24, 2011 3:54:23 GMT -5 kal said:

Halo / CoD

Regenerating shields/health is one the worst things to happen to gaming in a long time. Not because the mechanic itself is bad but because it almost totally killed off health packs and health management in way too many genres. It leads to such lazy level design and while I appreciate that health regen is a great mechanic SOMETIMES - it's too often used.

In the same issue they've led to a horrible case of FLASHY GIMMICKY SET PIECE EVENTS (particularly CoD) that has also found its way into far too many titles.

Maybe you hadn't heard about this, as it was around eight years ago. The reason health packs went away was because of the Red Cross. They were getting pissy because their logo was essentially being used for free on most of the health packs in video games. They were threatening legal action. It wasn't about compensation, but the fact that they thought it was wrong to be associated with so much violence, when their organization is diametrically opposed to that sort of thing.

Presto. Regenerating health.

[Ike]

Madden.

Fuck Madden.

serious.txt: Silent Hill 2. I love the game to death but apparently so did everybody else. The fangirl fawning over Pyramid Head is perplexing given what he's supposed to represent in the game. Not to mention the flood of horror games from 2004-2009ish that wholesale ripped the game off, not least of which within its own franchise. The emotional impact of the game has had its balls cut off because everybody's already seen it! Very hard to recommend it to anybody who hasn't played it.

[retr0gamer]

Ys and Tribes had regenerating health before Halo. Blame them.

[Discoalucard]

May 24, 2011 3:54:23 GMT -5 kal said:

Halo / CoD

This, but more for the "you can only carry like two guns" thing - I don't mind regenerating health. It's okay on the context of Halo, but it's annoying to see in other FPSes. I don't want to swap my machine for the rocket launcher, just let me pick up the damn rocket launcher! If I can survive a few bullets in face and be perfectly fine if I hide behind a rock for a few seconds, I'm sure my magic soldier can fit an RPG in his pants somewhere.

[loempiavreter]

Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons licensed belt scrollers, nowadays the rare sight of a belt scroll/beat'em up title that's going to be released has some shoddy rpg stat system :/

Denjin Makai worked fine without!

The one who started the sandbox craze (GTAIII?) I loathe sandbox and openworld games (Bethesda's games are the worst offender of those). Some games that had great art direction where parred with open world/sandbox gameplay. I don't like driving/walking around, just get to the point, I don't like driving/walking/whatever too each mission... it's stretching my precious time. And it's not that there is much to do in an open world game :/ It's all boring pre-scripted stuff... not the rollercoaster ride of a good stage design

Metroid(vania), just die already, for partially for the same reasons as above.