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[David Wong]

Since we did a pet peeves thread and I wrote that Gamer's Manifesto article off it three years ago, they've come out with new consoles and a lot of the problems from back then have been addressed (AI has gotten smarter, more varied genres of games and game mechanics).

So I wanted a fresh thread about pet peeves that are either new to the 360/Wii/PS3 generation, or linger inexcusably.

I was thinking about some day doing an article with the tone of, "Why are these things STILL a problem in 2008?"

No need to mention load times. That'd be at the top of the list.

EDIT:  Okay, so far we've got:

Load times.

Rodent enemies.

Shoot the boss in the flashy thingy.

FPS main characters with no feet or shadows

FPS jumping puzzles

A new one is poor value Downloadable Content (DLC).

Lack of difficulty settings. 

Level god damned scaling.

Save checkpoints.

Complete lack of split-fucking-screen multiplayer, or a fun multiplayer experience in general.

Mandatory Installation

Lag/Slow-down on consoles

Simon-Says quicktime events (RE4, Heavenly Sword)

Lack of variety in enemies

Multiple models of consoles

Game trailers that only show cutscenes

Collision detection.

unskippable cutscenes

Lack of controller configuration options

Hanging onto a pointless lives system

Shitty Teammate AI

Invisible walls

[coolman]

The sheer amount of sequels in gaming is downright scary in the next-gen consoles.  Its like everyone started drinking from the Square Enix Kool-aid.

[David Wong]

Rodent enemies.

You've bought an awesome-looking game, with incredible effects and beautiful environments and kick-ass weapons you can't wait to use.  Then, your first experience fighting something, is some tiny, crawling creature who jumps up at your face as you try desperately to hit it with some melee weapon.

I'm talking about the rats and crabs in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.  The headcrabs from Half Life 2. The leech things in Resident Evil: UC. 

They're not satisfying to kill, they're hard to see and harder to hit, and they're fucking EVERYWHERE.

It seems to be some kind of fundamental element of game design now to include some numerous, ankle-high enemy for you to have to kill throughout the game, and they make the whole game worse.  Why do it? Is it because rendering and animating larger enemies is too hard on the system?

Haim, are you out there?  Do you know why they do this?

[Johnny Roastbeef]

Both of my complaints were really highlighted by Metroid Prime 3 for the Wii.

Shoot the boss in the flashy thingy. Shoot the boss in the flashing thingy was old when you had to do it in Contra and neither the jump to 3D, nor the switch to "lightgun" control on the Wii has changed it.

A similar complaint is "shoot the boss when they're in the vulnerable phase."  Do people really think it's fun to stand around dodging shit while they wait for the 1 second during which they can actually crap off a few shots at the boss's uvula?  And inevitably your giant charged up laserection crashes into the pillar that the boss dodged behind so you have to settle for a few piddly little potshots each cycle. 

[Navigator2001Plus]

FPS main characters with no feet or shadows

Seen in Call of Duty 4 and BioShock

Back up against a wall and look down and all you see is the edge where floor meets wall. It's not a huge problem, but it takes take you out of the game a little bit when you realize your guy is basically a floating camera with arms attached who doesn't cast a shadow.

Halo 3's Master Chief has feet and casts realistic shadows, so you know it's not impossible.

[Johnny Roastbeef]

A new one is poor value Downloadable Content (DLC).  Yes this is going to be the "gaming of the future" but when you remove features so that you can charge to get them back, that's not right.

Here's $5 for a single course addon to Tiger Woods Golf

$7.50 for a single race track to Forza 2 (later reduced due to whining)

5 Rainbow 6 Maps for 800 Points (10 bucks I believe, later released for free)

2 Maps for $5 bucks

Need for speed charges $25 to unlock what used to be cheat codes

[Navigator2001Plus]

$2.50 for horse armor in Oblivion

Not only is it overpriced compared relatively to the cost of an entire game ($60), but it's the sort of thing the game should have shipped with from the start.

And I just checked the Marketplace on my 360, and 17 of the extra planes (downloaded individually) for Ace Combat 6 will run you 50 fucking dollars in total. I'm not sure, but I think some of them are just paint jobs for existing planes in the game.

Stuntman: Ignition has a vehicle content download pack for $5, but the file is only 108 KB, which means all it's doing is unlocking content already on the disc. And the info for that download doesn't tell you whether those vehicles can be unlocked through normal play of the game.


Before MS Points existed, the original Xbox had a free area for KOTOR, free maps for Halo 2, and free planes and maps for Crimson Skies, to name a few examples.

[nathan_birch]

Lack of difficulty settings. 

This is something you hear complained about more than almost anything else.  Read any messageboard thread on a big new these days and half the comments complain about it being too easy...or, in less frequent cases, too hard.  With game companies trying to draw in new casual gamers while at the same time trying to keep old hardcore gamers it's only getting worse...it seems more and more games are either on one end of the scale or another.  It seems like a really easy thing to do, and something that's been around forever but it seems most major games purposefly ignore the option.

[wophugus]

Level god damned scaling.

Talking 'bout oblivion and mass effect, mostly.  Beyond turning your first play-through into a treadmill, this also ruins replayability for me.  I don't understand why you would go to the trouble of creating a massive, intricate world with seemingly limitless options for the player to explore, then insure that absolutely every single choice he makes will result in the exact same experience.  Want to try to sneak through the super high level cave early on to get to the long-dicked storm crusher?  Tough.  Want the challenge and reward of exploring that harder planet first this time?  Balls on your face, you get nothing.  In games about exploration as much as plot, choice should be about more than determining which cut scenes we see in between dungeon crawls. 

[plustax]

Rodent enemies.

You've bought an awesome-looking game, with incredible effects and beautiful environments and kick-ass weapons you can't wait to use.  Then, your first experience fighting something, is some tiny, crawling creature who jumps up at your face as you try desperately to hit it with some melee weapon.

I'm talking about the rats and crabs in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.  The headcrabs from Half Life 2. The leech things in Resident Evil: UC. 

They're not satisfying to kill, they're hard to see and harder to hit, and they're fucking EVERYWHERE.

It seems to be some kind of fundamental element of game design now to include some numerous, ankle-high enemy for you to have to kill throughout the game, and they make the whole game worse.  Why do it? Is it because rendering and animating larger enemies is too hard on the system?

Haim, are you out there?  Do you know why they do this?

I remember reading an interview, concerning these here head crabs.

It was something along the lines of being such a simple enemy becuase they are a pain to kill, and something that could be ubiquitous with the series, along with inspiring fear whenever you hear that scree.

So for half-life it was for atmosphere.

[David Wong]

Level god damned scaling.

Talking 'bout oblivion and mass effect, mostly.  Beyond turning your first play-through into a treadmill, this also ruins replayability for me.  I don't understand why you would go to the trouble of creating a massive, intricate world with seemingly limitless options for the player to explore, then insure that absolutely every single choice he makes will result in the exact same experience.  Want to try to sneak through the super high level cave early on to get to the long-dicked storm crusher?  Tough.  Want the challenge and reward of exploring that harder planet first this time?  Balls on your face, you get nothing.  In games about exploration as much as plot, choice should be about more than determining which cut scenes we see in between dungeon crawls. 

I actually don't understand what you're saying here.  What is level scaling?

[Indolentron]

Level god damned scaling.

Talking 'bout oblivion and mass effect, mostly.  Beyond turning your first play-through into a treadmill, this also ruins replayability for me.  I don't understand why you would go to the trouble of creating a massive, intricate world with seemingly limitless options for the player to explore, then insure that absolutely every single choice he makes will result in the exact same experience.  Want to try to sneak through the super high level cave early on to get to the long-dicked storm crusher?  Tough.  Want the challenge and reward of exploring that harder planet first this time?  Balls on your face, you get nothing.  In games about exploration as much as plot, choice should be about more than determining which cut scenes we see in between dungeon crawls. 

I actually don't understand what you're saying here.  What is level scaling?

Level scaling is when the enemies you encounter are always approximately your level, whether it's 3 steps from where the game begins, or the harshest, most remote region.    I very much share his sentiments; level scaling really hampered my enjoyment of Oblivion.

[Mister Fahrenheit]

Save checkpoints. I think data storage technology has advanced enough so that we can actually save our game without having to slog our way through half a level of things that want to kill us to death. Yes, I'm looking at you, Ninja Gaiden and Call of Duty 4.

[Reverend]

Level god damned scaling.

Talking 'bout oblivion and mass effect, mostly.  Beyond turning your first play-through into a treadmill, this also ruins replayability for me.  I don't understand why you would go to the trouble of creating a massive, intricate world with seemingly limitless options for the player to explore, then insure that absolutely every single choice he makes will result in the exact same experience.  Want to try to sneak through the super high level cave early on to get to the long-dicked storm crusher?  Tough.  Want the challenge and reward of exploring that harder planet first this time?  Balls on your face, you get nothing.  In games about exploration as much as plot, choice should be about more than determining which cut scenes we see in between dungeon crawls. 

I actually don't understand what you're saying here.  What is level scaling?

Level scaling is when the enemies you encounter are always approximately your level, whether it's 3 steps from where the game begins, or the harshest, most remote region.    I very much share his sentiments; level scaling really hampered my enjoyment of Oblivion.

This was/is a big thing for me too, and Oblivion/Morrowind does seem to be the best comparison. In Oblivion, since everything is scaled to your level, anywhere and everything is fair game since every damn enemy, while maybe being slightly tougher than the average, is still something you can take on. Which ruins the feel of Oblivion, as you can escape from the starting dungeon, your raggedy pants and a stolen sword your only possessions in the world, then proceed to raid the Evil Fortress of DoomSlayer the Almighty and have at least a chance of getting through.

Morrowind had none of that- if you tried raiding a deadric ruin at level 5 you got your ass handed to you because it was filled with the sort of hardcore creatures you expected. As part of the same, when you reached Ridiculous Level, you could rest assured that a bandit on the road would be a passing annoyance as you cut through his leather armour with your Sword of Almighty Twatting +5. Oblivion's scaling model would mean that if you were at a high level, all bandits would be wearing armour worth more gold than the King's treasury.

[Lotharian]

Complete lack of split-fucking-screen multiplayer, or a fun multiplayer experience in general.

It amazes me that we have 3 systems out that have 4 controller slots each, and theres literally only a handful of games that aren't shitty party games that takes advantage of those 4 slots, and does it in a way that doesn't leave me feeling cold.

[Remington]

free maps for Halo 2

The Halo 2 maps were not always free.  You originally had to pay money for them and could only play them in certain playlists against other people who had downloaded them as well.  Each pack became free after about 6 months because they wanted the maps to be playable in every playlist, and they didn't want to charge every Halo 2 player to be able to simply play the game online.

So that might not be the best example of free stuff that the original Xbox had.

[Adam Ruining]

Mandatory Installation

Not a problem on the Wii (no true hard drive) or the Xbox 360 (where it's technically an accessory), but on the Playstation 3, Devil May Cry 4 has a mandatory installation when you first insert the disc.  However many gigs of information it installs is however many gigs you won't get back if you want to play the game unless you want a 25 minute load time each time you play the game.  And if rumors are true, this is just the beginning.

[Werty]

I'm not sure how to turn this into a complaint, but I'd like to see a game with hordes of really simple looking enemies, rather than having every fucking character in the game having pixel-shaded, bump-mapped, 9000 polygon, various-other-buzzwords-I-don't-understand models.

I'll admit, I like a super realistic looking game now and then, but it seems to be what they go for in every game I've played.

Also, why does my console lag... ever? I mean, the developers know exactly what every single xbox360 out there can do, right? This isn't like a computer, where they just kinda have to guess what hardware will be popular and cross their fingers.

[Logical Penguin]

Endings That Aren't Complete Cop-Outs

Crysis. Bioshock. Assassin's Creed.

A really good plot has become an increasingly important part of games. The above mentioned games had really good story lines (Maybe not so much for Crysis, which was very derivative, but the Carrier portion was pretty awesome) and then had completely crap endings.

I'll put my examples in spoiler text.

Crysis: The plot wasn't the greatest thing in the universe, but it worked, and as far as action goes, the ending on the Carrier was awesome. You blew up that giant fucking alien thing, saved the day and all was well. Granted, prophet was still unaccounted for, but a loose thread like that is perfectly acceptable when sequels are pretty much guaranteed. But then you had to hop into your ship, declare that you were going back for him, open up this whole new arc to the story... and just end it, right there. Fuck you and your cliffhangers.

Bioshock: For me, the whole last act of the game sucked, once Ryan was killed off. You go through the whole game at odds with this brilliant, complex, interesting antagonist in Andrew Ryan... and then you kill him with a golf club. That should have been the end right there. Then maybe you spend a couple more minutes escaping Rapture. I would have been okay with that. Instead I spend another couple hours running around being harassed by a fat man doing a god awful Godfather impression. Then there's a boring boss fight and I get one of two endings (despite all the hubbub about "choice" nobody would shut up about) that just feel tacked on either way.


Assassin's Creed: Everything about this game was awesome right up until the very end when you find Al-Mualim, after he's betrayed you, and you discover what this "treasure" you've been hearing all about is. It's a magic thing. Magic. Nevermind that part of what made the plot so damn awesome was that it took events separated by over a thousand years, wove them together with a vast conspiracy, and most importantly, made it all sound plausible. Now instead being totally wrapped up playing a helpless pawn in a massive conspiracy spanning millienia... I'm chasing after the end boss while he fucking teleports around the map.

Only in the past several years has a really engaging, well written plot become an integral part to a most games. So why does it seem like the writers are always getting utterly shit-faced after writing 90% of the story and then finishing the whole thing up under a semi-drunk hungover stupor?

[David Wong]

Also, why does my console lag... ever? I mean, the developers know exactly what every single xbox360 out there can do, right? This isn't like a computer, where they just kinda have to guess what hardware will be popular and cross their fingers.

That is the fucking question of the generation.