Quirks and trends in modern games that bother you

[Sharessa]

udderdude said:

Jamestown was exactly that kind of boring, uninspired orchestra music. It totally ruined the mood of the game for me. Much better orchestra music in shmups are Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga.

Hmm, I thought it was exactly the kind of soundtrack the game needed, myself. It gets you really pumped and makes you want to keep playing. Especially the music from the final level. It also reminds me of the sort of music you'd hear on SNES games for some reason, despite being much more high-quality.

[yellowmadness54]

Commercials with fixed Gameinformer and IGN reviews, no gameplay just cutscenes from the game, movie music...
Pretty much shitty hollywood movie trailers, but with games.

[Prince of Darkness]

My biggest problem? Only 2 weapon carrying. I recently played through resistance 2, which is like a completely different game from the original because of that- instead of having (in some cases, literally) having tens or hundreds of different ways to deal with an enemy or situation, there's barely a handful.

It's never "Here's a few ways to deal with these guys/rooms/ect." it's "HEARS A ROCKET LAUNCHER AND THESE BIG GUYS CAN ONLY BE HURT BY THEM"- one of the final levels in the aforementioned Resistance 2 had one of their final levels in the bayou, against a bunch of guys who need some serious ordinance to take down- so the game gives you a rocket launcher, just like that. And there's no other way to do it.

[Mr. Freeze]

As a writer, it really bothers me when the game is an obvious vehicle for the story. Video games should be about the GAMEPLAY, not anything else. If you want to tell a story, write a fucking book.

As a musician, generic orchestral crap has got to go. Perfect example: Quake 2 vs Quake 4. Which soundtrack is still loved today?

[Quast]

Mr. Freeze said:

Quake 2 vs Quake 4. Which soundtrack is still loved today?

Neither?

[Koko Ricky]

Although I agree with many of the comments, how many "I sure am fucking jaded from modern gaming" threads are we going to have?

[Snakes]

Mr. Freeze said:

As a writer, it really bothers me when the game is an obvious vehicle for the story. Video games should be about the GAMEPLAY, not anything else. If you want to tell a story, write a fucking book.

And here I was thinking games should have gameplay AND good stories. Silly me.

[geo]

40oz said:

The trend that a gamer will buy a game, play it, complain about it, and continue playing it until the same developer makes a new one and starts the cycle over.

Exactly and I'm guilty of this. I played Star Trek Online 20+ hours thinking fuck is this boring. Busy work busy work... for an MMO I didn't interact with anyone at all. But then why do I play? Eh I'm done with it now.

[Mr. Freeze]

Snakes said:

And here I was thinking games should have gameplay AND good stories. Silly me.

I probably worded it wrong. What I mean is that the story should not come at the expense of gameplay. That, I think, is the main difference between games like Doom and Call of Duty.

Doom doesn't really have a story, and it never suffered for it. It's not bogged down by cutscenes every two minutes, its not loaded with voice acting...everything revolves around shooting demons.

[Snakes]

Mr. Freeze said:

I probably worded it wrong. What I mean is that the story should not come at the expense of gameplay. That, I think, is the main difference between games like Doom and Call of Duty.

Doom doesn't really have a story, and it never suffered for it. It's not bogged down by cutscenes every two minutes, its not loaded with voice acting...everything revolves around shooting demons.

Ah, I see what you're saying. This is basically the Music vs. Lyrics thread all over again.

[caco_killer]

I hate how everyone fucking camps in multiplayer fps games now. I want everyone to just run and gun.

[Nomad]

I'm not going to say "linearity" because there are plenty of open-world, sandboxy games coming out lately. My biggest complaint about newer games is more and more are making the goddamn developer logos and cutscenes unskippable when you launch the game. I don't mind the first time I play a game because sometimes they throw them in fairly creatively, but every time I launch a game I don't need to be reminded of who developed and published the fucking thing.

It can't be that hard to either rig it so they only show the first time you start up, or at the very least make them skippable. When I want to play a game I want to play it NOW. My attention span is getting smaller and smaller as I get older and older, and soon enough I'm going to fall asleep during these fucking intros.

Aside from that, I'm actually pretty happy with the last few newer games I've gotten.

Prince of Darkness said:

My biggest problem? Only 2 weapon carrying. I recently played through resistance 2, which is like a completely different game from the original because of that- instead of having (in some cases, literally) having tens or hundreds of different ways to deal with an enemy or situation, there's barely a handful.

It's never "Here's a few ways to deal with these guys/rooms/ect." it's "HEARS A ROCKET LAUNCHER AND THESE BIG GUYS CAN ONLY BE HURT BY THEM"- one of the final levels in the aforementioned Resistance 2 had one of their final levels in the bayou, against a bunch of guys who need some serious ordinance to take down- so the game gives you a rocket launcher, just like that. And there's no other way to do it.

Oh yes, I've forgotten about that. Fortunately I haven't played many games that do this, except DNF which I still haven't bothered to finish.

It's a way for the developer to cheat at their job, honestly. By limiting the number of weapons you can carry to just a couple, and by drastically limiting ammunition in certain areas, they use this to force you to use certain weapons in places they want you to. So on top of these sorts of games already being a complete tube run, they are also tightly restricting how you progress through that tube.

In other words, it's lazy.

I'm not going to complain about linearity because it's been an aspect of most games since the beginning and isn't always the wrong thing to do, but this sort of laziness makes me wonder why they don't just make rail shooters anymore. I never liked rail shooters to begin with, so I don't know why they think that replacing the rail with moderate ability to control your own movement changes anything.

[Belial]

Fake incentives trying to encourage replayability.

I've started noticing it with games like Serious Sam and Painkiller where you could only access the highest skill level after beating the game. Admittedly it wasn't much of a problem with SS where the jump from Serious to Mental could be compared to moving from UV to NM.

Then there's the old arcade gimmick of tying the length of the game or even the way the game ends to the difficulty setting. I replayed Max Payne 2 so many times because it's a fun game, not because there's another ending to be discovered.

RPG series rarely invest enough time into fleshing out the impact of your choices in the previous game so there goes all the multiple endings/character import bullshit.

And don't even get me started on achievements/awards/etc. Level 60 in Mass Effect? Please.

This came to my mind after I've finished Serious Sam 3 on Mental, which was slightly less shiteasy that Serious. It was the second and last time I've played it, as I'd much rather play Second Encounter again (and again...) with it's varied weapon set and rich enemy cast, you know, the things SS3 lacked.

tl;dr: When possible, I want to see 100% of the game in one playthrough, then decide if I want to play it again, not start playing with the knowledge that I'll have to play it again to hopefully get my money's worth.

[Phobus]

"moderate ability to control your own movement" does mean you can pick your own thing to take cover behind (out of the usually limited choices in any given firefight), which gives the FPS a tactical element. The fact that I'd much rather be running about and dodging the shots fired obviously doesn't come into this.

@Belial: That "unlock the next higher difficulty" thing is in DNF, Doom3, all DMC games... It's not a resurgant thing, it's just in games a bit more often now (probably for the reason you gave of cheap replayability). I agree with you that it should be possible to get the full 100% the first time through and preferably on any difficulty.

[The Lag]

.

Edited June 17 by The Lag

[Jodwin]

Phobus said:

It's not a resurgant thing, it's just in games a bit more often now (probably for the reason you gave of cheap replayability).

Possibly that, sure, but also to prevent the case of bad players picking the hardest difficulty because they think they're leet, then getting badly owned and subsequently flaming the developers on various forums for disgracing the noob's "honor."

I'd say that's a major factor behind limiting the giving weaponry and the "rocket launcher only-bosses" too: Developers don't want to risk giving the player a bunch of weapons and ammo in advance only to have idiot players waste everything while shooting walls and then have nothing to fight the bosses with.

[DuckReconMajor]

^ I was about to say the same thing. At first I couldn't figure out why developers were giving us fewer and fewer customization opportunities. Then I started seeing developers say things like keeping the experience the same for everyone and I started to understand (doesn't mean I agreed). Lots of people will play the game a certain way, usually like Jodwin said because they think they're tuff, and it will ruin the game experience and the developers get blamed. Like I remember I thought I was badass when Black Ops came out and turned off the aim assist. Suddenly the game became a lot less fun.

But sometimes, like I know is the case in Doom 3, you can do a cheat to unlock the hardest difficulty. That way the people who go to that mode first have some idea what they're getting into.

However I do think the second point Jodwin said is something that should be done. Not by limiting all your weapons but if you need a certain weapon to take a boss down, I don't think you should be able to waste all available ammo and not be able to beat it. I remember testing to see if Bulletsorm would make an unbeatable situation when you used up all your ammo at a boss. Turns out they just drop a 50 clip into your gun when you run out during a boss battle.

[Jodwin]

DuckReconMajor said:

^ I was about to say the same thing. At first I couldn't figure out why developers were giving us fewer and fewer customization opportunities. Then I started seeing developers say things like keeping the experience the same for everyone and I started to understand (doesn't mean I agreed). Lots of people will play the game a certain way, usually like Jodwin said because they think they're tuff, and it will ruin the game experience and the developers get blamed. Like I remember I thought I was badass when Black Ops came out and turned off the aim assist. Suddenly the game became a lot less fun.

Also, if anyone disagrees with the analysis I'll just point at everyone here who always plays UV first, no matter what.

[thelostsoul83]

Lots of things, that's why I've pretty much given up on today's games.

*Activation/online account requirements to play: How do I know they will still offer the service in a few years?
*forcing the user to install third-party clients just to play a game
*crummy level design: repetitive sections, buggy maps where I fall out of the world, tiny levels with long load times, etc.
*no level editing/game modification tools
*cut-scenes that the player cannot skip
*lack of dedicated multiplayer servers

For me, the best time in gaming was around 1997-2000. I spent all my time playing Quake, Quake 2, Doom, Unreal, Thief, Duke3d, etc. Even though I have a large computer with 16 GB of memory and 6-cores, I got a Xbox360, specifically so I can buy all my games used to avoid supporting the current industry. When they implement an online activation system for console games, that's when I'll stop playing modern games entirely.

[geo]

caco_killer said:

I hate how everyone fucking camps in multiplayer fps games now. I want everyone to just run and gun.

This is why I love Team Fortress 2. Even if someone camps, there are 2 ways to get him.