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Heart-dropping moments

Started by Rev, January 14, 2011, 12:49:11 AM

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Rev

Let's name and shame them.  You know the kind of thing:  you're enjoying an otherwise well-designed game, and then a sudden, lazy bit of padding yawns up from the depths.  The kind of thing that just makes you immediately despair, because you're facing the whole business of getting through the bit that's between you and the rest of the game.

To start with a perfect example:  I picked up a cheap copy of Alan Wake in the sales.  Yeah, I wasn't expecting greatness, but something entertaining enough for the price.  And it was.  Right up until the chilling moment when my in-game companion said 'the gate's locked, you're gonna have to go through that hedge maze over there...'

Mister Six

I really, genuinely love Fallout: New Vegas, and can handle its glitched quests, clipping enemies and occasional screen-freezes without much trouble. But occasionally I'll be tromping across a great big mountaintop, leaping from rock to rock, scrabbling up dirt and sand, only to reach the very cusp of the peak - all that stands between me and the blinking target on my map - and run smack into an invisible wall.

An invisible wall!  For fuck's sakes. The whole point of the Fallout games was that you could tackle quests however you liked, go wherever you liked and generally arse about exploring and having fun. So why put these cunting things all over the map? Just put a steeper, higher cliff there if you want me to take a different route. Shocking game design that utterly destroys any attempts at immersion.

uglybob1986

Original Halo- the Library.
The rest of the game is a finely judged tactical shooter (especially in co- op), but for some reason the makers wedged in this looong and unvaried run and gun mission exclusively featuring the most annoying enemies in the game. I wouldn't mind so much if they hadn't made the same mistake in both the sequels. In a lesser shooter it may have been excusable, but it sticks out like a sore thumb in such a classic.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

I've long defended The Library as a level. It's designed to make you learn how to fight the flood. It's repetitive and it gets bloody hard, but it's a completely different way of fighting to how you've done before. This is what people don't give Halo credit for- half way through the game it introduces a foe that causes you to completely change your combat style. Then afterwards it asks you to fight both foes at once and not die. Okay, you could probably say Space Invaders or Galaxians taught you that, but it never felt so dynamic.

I've gone very far- I've gone from hating it, the hardest fucking chore in the entire world to actually thinking 'wow this is good, that really pushed me'. The Library will make you think about every shell, every bullet, every grenade as you back pedal slowly from the face-munching horror that wants to engulf you. It's horror brought into FPS, lovely stuff.

What's more, there's the idea of the shit-eating grins on the devs as you realise your little robot chum put you through it for nothing.


Big Jack McBastard

I don't recall running into any invisible walls in Fallout NV other than in mountainous areas or the edges of the map... Painfully annoying and frequent barriers though, they're plentiful as ever.

I've certainly seen some shoddy textures in the mountainous areas though, bits that jut out from the surface only attached on one side so they're half see-through if you look from the right (wrong) angle, they must have known someone would see them, how they let it slip so many times is beyond me.

I didn't mind The Library, oh it was a pain in the arse once you got in there from the start for the 3rd time but at least it keeps you on your toes and forces you to use different tactics.

QTEs in the middle of otherwise free-roaming games do my bean in, especially when they make repeat appearances. On the flip side of that I've enjoyed what I've played of Ninja Blade so far which is chock full of QTEs, but perhaps that's because it's so OTT (think Bayonetta trying to be serious) that it can be forgiven.

Ladders, in sooo many games make me want to kill, especially descending them, or rather failing to do so and smashing into the ground (I seem to remember COD being annoying for this). I can't remember who it was harping on about them recently but they made a very salient point of: "You'd have thought they'd have sorted this kind of shit out by now.". Return to Castle Wolfenstien on the PC had good ladders, you could pause on them and snipe between the rungs, lovely!

The inevitable 'protect the convoy' mission in RTS/FPS games almost invariably make me quit after 2 utterly unfair humiliations..

ThickAndCreamy

I really never understood what made Halo a classic game as the whole thing just felt like a standard FPS when I played it (same goes for Halo 3). Me and a friend played through it on co-op as well, and we just found it extremely dull. To be fair however most critically acclaimed 'serious' FPS games leave me cold after an hour in single player. Bioshock, Call Of Duty, Half Life 2, Far Cry etc. The heart dropping moment for me in every one of those games usually occurs after an hour or two once I realised I'm not having that much fun, and not much is going to change for the rest of the game. Timesplitters 2 and 3 on the other hand... with its endless selections of locations, time zones, weapons, characters, minigames, tasks and humour just puts a huge smile on my face. It's short, quick, diverse and incredibly good fun.

The biggest heart-dropping moment for me in a game was probably for GTA IV. I played the 3 GTA PS2 games to death, and GTA IV was my most anticipated game for the next generation of consoles. However, after about 3 hours in of driving, walking and shooting around a large, sprawling and monotonous city I realised I hadn't really enjoyed it. The epiphany of understanding that happened to me during San Andreas never happened. Why the fuck would I want to unlock some more city?

I want to climb some mountains dressed like a pimp using a fucking jetpack, jump from the highest point and parachute on top of a moving car shooting it with machine guns at the same time. Instead I got to slowly fly over a city in a pansy ass helicopter, dressed as a disgruntled taxi cab driver. I couldn't jump out and shoot the shit out of big trucks and foreigners, instead you slowly fall to your death and are unable to do anything but swear at Rockstar for being such ponces.

If I can't shoot hookers with a minigun, then run outside, nick an airplane, cover it in C4 and crash it into a mountain blowing it up just as it hits as I parachute below sniping pilots of out planes with a laser rifle in the next GTA, I'm never playing a new GTA game again.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

You like 'fun' games.

That's fine.

I don't hate you.

Not at all.

Comparing Halo unfavourably to Timesplitters doesn't upset me in the least.

No.

I'm ok.

ThickAndCreamy

I would like serious games if the vast majority of those I've have played aren't dull or forgettable. It's so rare in gaming for something that isn't intensely long or repetitive to have a coherent, deep and interesting serious narrative without endlessly slipping into melodrama or third rate voice acting. Bioshock seemed to do the above, but then it's main themes and ideas were all used up within the first hour, and nearly all of whom were borrowed from the major dystopian works of 20th century film and literature. It was the Equilibrium of game plots: nothing original, all just borrowed from more intelligent and entertaining stories. All of the other games I stated in an earlier post go from having a neo-con, endlessly clichéd and CIA created mess of a story (Call of Duty 4) to a story so bland I've completely forgotten it (Far Cry). So, as far too many games have such sub-par lazy plots and writing I find it easier to enjoy games that are just attempting to be enjoyable. Seeing games like GTA IV praised for being the height of satire for instance just makes me think games storylines are held and rated to a much lower standard than other art forms.

It's therefore obvious why I prefer games which are just enjoyable, as I've been failed in the past by far too many critically acclaimed games. Compared to something like films, it's harder to find obscurer, more intelligent stuff as it costs so fucking much money to produce a full game. Not to say they don't happen of course, they're just less abundant..

Anyway, I've been through this argument too many times, someone should just probably just make a thread about it so I can stop taking this so off topic yet again.

Zero Gravitas

^ You're on my black list now.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

QuoteSeeing games like GTA IV praised for being the height of satire for instance just makes me think games storylines are held and rated to a much lower standard than other art forms.

The satire wasn't so much related to the storyline though, it was one long blistering attack on consumerism from beginning to end. The amount of spite and contempt meted out on something so unnecessary- after all it has no direct bearing on the gameplay- was a joy to behold. It felt like a backlash against the cravely consumerist San Andreas. I generally regard unnecessary levels of effort as one of the most praiseworthy things in anything, beyond artforms. If the satire wasn't good enough, what wasn't it as good as? At first I was going to say 'Ok it wasn't the height of satire'- but at the time, what was?

I agree that the game itself wasn't 'great'. Indeed it was like all other GTA games- fun but poor controls and poor actual overall gameplay. Although I do think it did make some progress.

Anyway, I'm a bit drunk but this is what I think, honest.

falafel


Neville Chamberlain

I hate it on Chuckie Egg when yuo jump onto a ledge and it collapses under you and the game freezes.

The Masked Unit

Thickandcreamy, I have a feeling you would fucking LOVE Just Cause 2, which is now available for a tenner.

jutl

The ridiculously long fetch quest in Zelda Wind Waker that they put in because one of the dungeons wasn't finished. 

eluc55

Quote from: jutl on January 14, 2011, 09:43:41 AM
The ridiculously long fetch quest in Zelda Wind Waker that they put in because one of the dungeons wasn't finished.

Ah, really? Is that why its in there...? Certainly makes sense as its short on dungeons. And yes, its the one thing which spoils that game; absolutely unrelentingly awful for an hour or so, paying fish, getting maps translated by tingle, traipsing to the spot and hauling up the Triforce..... over and over. Urgh.

The Masked Unit

I gave up at that point, although I absolutely loved the game up until then.

Artemis

"Takedown" at the end of Act 1 of CoD:MW2 was an absolute bitch. Took me bloody ages, and I only managed it through walkthrough videos (that stopped me putting a hammer into my X-Box). Shortly after this, I decided gaming probably wasn't for me and sold the lot. Not before I completed that cunt on veteran, though.

Mister Six

Quote from: ThickAndCreamy on January 14, 2011, 03:06:49 AM
I really never understood what made Halo a classic game as the whole thing just felt like a standard FPS when I played it (same goes for Halo 3).

I'm half with you here. I think the original Halo was a genuinely very good game, from the core gameplay (solid AI, well balanced weapons, clear objectives) to the setting (it's a rip-off of Ringworld, sure, but the moment when you step out of the ship and see Halo curving out above you is stunning). But it wasn't the OMG MIND BLOWER that it seems to be hailed as, and I wonder how much of that enthusiasm was borne out of a desire for the Xbox's first major exclusive title to be the best thing ever. Certainly Halo 2 was a mess - an anaemic retread of Halo 1's story with unbalanced weapons, a fractured narrative and identical plot beats to the first game. Halo 3 was better, but also far too short and predictable.

To be honest - and I'm not slagging off anyone in this thread - I do wonder how much of Halo's success and fame as a franchise is down to then-new Xbox owners being desperate for their big exclusive to be THE BEST THING EVER. I mean, I do think that the first Halo game was great but the way the series basically recycled that game over and over kind of put me off the franchise as a whole (unlike, say, GTA - pre-IV - or even Bioshock, which put a lot of effort into innovating and improving on every level, from gameplay to stories.

Just to bring this back on topic, realising how lazy the Halo 2 dev team had been was another heart-dropping moment.

Quote from: The Masked Unit on January 14, 2011, 09:23:14 AM
Thickandcreamy, I have a feeling you would fucking LOVE Just Cause 2, which is now available for a tenner.

Seconded. It's basically 'build your own Michael Bay movie'.

The Masked Unit

If you ignore the woeful story/dialogue completely, which I have, it's probably the most fun I've ever had in a game - like a fucking brilliant version of Crackdown in a beautiful and diverse environment.

I don't think I can ever play another game again if it doesn't feature a grappling hook and instantly deployable parachute!

Mister Six

Oh yeah - the dialogue and acting are some of the worst I've ever heard in a game. But it says something that I'd completely forgotten there were even cutscenes. What I do remember is dropping remote-detonated explosives on a bunch of ninjas before leaping off the tallest building in the world, parachuting onto the back of a truck and stealing away a hostage from the middle of a convoy. At ever point where they had to decide between 'realistic' and 'fun', the designers chose fun. GTAIV could learn a lot from this. Although it could learn a lot from San Andreas, too...

chand

I think I must have become someone really boring, because I thought Just Cause 2 was fucking bobbins. Saint's Row 2 as well, which everyone said was way more fun than GTA IV. I guess it depends on what you want; I like moderate amounts of pissing around but JC2 was entirely that. The missions were piss-awful, and there's only so many explosions and parachute jumps I can do before it gets samey.

SetToStun

Quote from: Mister Six on January 14, 2011, 12:26:36 PM
I'm half with you here. I think the original Halo was a genuinely very good game, from the core gameplay (solid AI, well balanced weapons, clear objectives) to the setting (it's a rip-off of Ringworld, sure, but the moment when you step out of the ship and see Halo curving out above you is stunning). But it wasn't the OMG MIND BLOWER that it seems to be hailed as, and I wonder how much of that enthusiasm was borne out of a desire for the Xbox's first major exclusive title to be the best thing ever. Certainly Halo 2 was a mess - an anaemic retread of Halo 1's story with unbalanced weapons, a fractured narrative and identical plot beats to the first game. Halo 3 was better, but also far too short and predictable.

To be honest - and I'm not slagging off anyone in this thread - I do wonder how much of Halo's success and fame as a franchise is down to then-new Xbox owners being desperate for their big exclusive to be THE BEST THING EVER. I mean, I do think that the first Halo game was great but the way the series basically recycled that game over and over kind of put me off the franchise as a whole (unlike, say, GTA - pre-IV - or even Bioshock, which put a lot of effort into innovating and improving on every level, from gameplay to stories.

From my perspective I think the thing that made Halo so exciting as an XBox FPS was that since the move to 3D environments and characters, the emphasis had gone from mass firefights to closed-in environments with half a dozen enemies at most; think Quake and Quake II (QII at least featured outside areas but with very clever limits on view area and enemies, but was limited nonetheless). The XBox was a cut-down PC but still managed to have those sweeping outdoor areas with full-on assaults by dozens of aliens of varying types, all at the same time. It was ground-breaking for having the lush graphics and almost Doom-style firefights. The sound effects and music were amazing - at least to me - and the balance of the weapons affected gameplay just as much as it affected your chances of survival when you ran out of ammo for the big guns.

Halo 2 was, to be honest, a huge disappointment but, for the sake of being ridiculously fair, it had a hell of a lot to live up to and no additional hardware to exploit.

If I could be bothered to rig up my old XBox and find the original Halo, I'd still be more than a little inclined to play it through again and I can't really say that about any other pure FPS.

As for heart-dropping moments, see every Medal of Honour game ever made, ever. I know the Nazis had a (completely unfounded) reputation for researching exotic tech but I don't remember them ever being able to teleport soldiers into previously empty, sealed buildings. I'm equally at a loss to explain how a tiny piece of camoflage netting over the top of a hole in the ground can protect the Japanese occupant from a grenade being detonated right on top of their head. Those games had so much potential and it was all spunked on linear, tight-corridor-in-the-jungle/street, magispawning Nazi flimflammery. And Japs with magic machine guns and impenetrable camo-nets.

Pedro_Bear

"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR SQUIRE?!!!"

Frankly, Sinclair? If I thought stepping into a confinable space this late on in proceedings was a good idea, I probably wouldn't have made it this far, eh? Cut yer mic chatter and let me mine the living shit out of the suspiciously open area behind me, and chuck in some hilarious bee traps every three paces for good measure. "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR SQUIRE?!!!" Like I said, this looks like a tra'"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR SQUIRE?!!!" She's blatantly not going anywhere, calm dow"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR SQUIRE?!!!" I hope you die Sinclair, I didn't before, but now I d"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR SQUIRE?!!!" A CLEAR SHOT AT YOUR FACE SINCLAI"WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR SQUIRE?!!!" Fine, I'll just go step into a trap then. See? SEE? TWO OF THEM AT ONCE?! SINCLAAAAIIIIIR.

And then it railroaded us again, immediately afterwards. I was pathetically vested in the story by that point too, the elements just pushed all of my buttons for some reason, and the idea my poor little girl was dead-by-cutscene just added to the feeling of frustration and unfairness at this sudden forced turn of events. True, the reveals afterwards soon made up for it, and unknown to me there was a huge chunk of the game to go, but even so. If it comes down to cut-scenes to force us to the floor in an otherwise tactically avoidable manner, it removes the illusion of playing the game.

ThickAndCreamy

Quote from: chand on January 14, 2011, 01:17:25 PM
I think I must have become someone really boring, because I thought Just Cause 2 was fucking bobbins. Saint's Row 2 as well, which everyone said was way more fun than GTA IV. I guess it depends on what you want; I like moderate amounts of pissing around but JC2 was entirely that. The missions were piss-awful, and there's only so many explosions and parachute jumps I can do before it gets repetitive.
I half agree with this about Just Cause. The first 10 hours or so are incredible, but the diversity in missions and ideas are incredibly low. Every mission is usually just go to a base, kill someone or create an explosion and then run away. The grappling hook however, was indeed fantastically good fun along with the easily controllable helicopters and the overpowered weapons. However, over time it made jumping out of exploding planes and swarming from car to car boring as it was far too simple to achieve.

The thing is, games like San Andreas didn't make everything so easy and the diversity and depth was huge. Characters were humorous, well acted and generally drew you in without making the storyline overwhelmingly dull like in IV. The game felt epic and huge and the missions often involved ridiculous plots and things to do, like burying a man in cement, setting fire to a marijuana farm or finding Area 51. It's just the perfect sandbox game really, something with so much to do, in such a huge area with a story that engaging, and a soundtrack that's sublime.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Halo is so fundamentally well-made. The constant comments about it 'breaking no real ground' are misplaced, as it's basically been the benchmark for all first person shooters for 8 years, over-taking Half-Life in terms of people's understanding of what a top quality first person shooter is. How can something like that not be groundbreaking? There is something to be said for making a fucking awesome game that plays like a dream. The execution is about as flawless as it was ever going to get. As for first-time Xbox buyers, that's irrelevant- Halo remained the best Xbox title from beginning to end.

The sequels are a huge mess. Halo 3 gets it back to being quite good, but I think they lost something not having it all in the same environment. Lack of immersion, lack of context. They're a bit like later Peep Show series, same thrills, but difficult to grasp what's at stake.

Treguard of Dunshelm

Quote from: ThickAndCreamy on January 14, 2011, 02:00:44 PM
(San Andreas) felt epic and huge and the missions often involved ridiculous plots and things to do, like burying a man in cement, setting fire to a marijuana farm or finding Area 51. It's just the perfect sandbox game really, something with so much to do, in such a huge area with a story that engaging, and a soundtrack that's sublime.

It's not remotely a sandbox game! Free-roaming, yes, but you're no less limited in the way you approach obstacles as you are in IV, despite the hype. I remember burning the dope farm funny the first time (I was a teenager, HAHA DRUGS) but really dull on subsequent playthroughs. They're both great games, but in very different ways, I prefer the polish of IV myself.

Which reminds me, I found rescuing your brother[nb]Your character's brother, not T&C's brother.[/nb] in SA a let down, as the cunt berates you for not keeping it real, despite the fact you're the crime lord of an entire state. Fuck you bro, stay in jail then.

Also, finishing the main quest of Fable II and realising that was it.

Treguard of Dunshelm

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on January 14, 2011, 02:32:25 PM
Halo is so fundamentally well-made. The constant comments about it 'breaking no real ground' are misplaced, as it's basically been the benchmark for all first person shooters for 8 years, over-taking Half-Life in terms of people's understanding of what a top quality first person shooter is. How can something like that not be groundbreaking? There is something to be said for making a fucking awesome game that plays like a dream. The execution is about as flawless as it was ever going to get. As for first-time Xbox buyers, that's irrelevant- Halo remained the best Xbox title from beginning to end.

The sequels are a huge mess. Halo 3 gets it back to being quite good, but I think they lost something not having it all in the same environment. Lack of immersion, lack of context. They're a bit like later Peep Show series, same thrills, but difficult to grasp what's at stake.

One of the things that...not spoilt, cos I love Halo, but flawed the sequels is the obsession with the background, which is average milscifi pulp, and this detracted a bit from the gameplay and sense of immersion. They should have just carried on ripping off classic SF and action like they did in the original. And they fucked around with the weapons when they were almost perfectly balanced already[nb]UNSC pistol notwithstanding[/nb]. Halo 3 was a bit better in this respect and Reach very good, but not quite on the same level.

And it's nice to see The Library get a bit of love, I too think it's cruelly slated. You've gotta make every bullet count.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Aye, I'll go for Fable II. Realising 4 years had been spent making miniscule improvements to the same game and giving it a poorer, shorter story that is very similar.

As Peter Molyneux says himself, the game is made so simple you can complete it without even needing to touch the special banzai super moves they'd spent years getting ready to show off.

Fable II infuriates me hugely just to think about.

I'm sick of it now. Make a Fable with some sense of longevity and achievement with an open world. If you can't, I don't want to know.


Dead kate moss

I agree with pretty much everything Thick and Creamy says - I've played a bit of Halo and Call Of Duty and like most FPS I get bored quite quickly. Played one played em all, better graphics or not. I don't think the Tomb Raider series counts, which I loved, because of all the problem solving, the sudden shocks of T-Rexs appearing or huge statues coming to life in a way I haven't found done as well in other games (though I'm no longer much of a gamer). And also Lara Croft's tits and bum. But on-topic, the worst part of TR, especially the second I think, was having to run around a huge area looking for a really hard to find key or secret entrance, then loads more running to check all the rooms again, etc.


Jemble Fred

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on January 14, 2011, 03:10:11 PM
I'm sick of it now. Make a Fable with some sense of longevity and achievement with an open world. If you can't, I don't want to know.

I'm going through similar emotions with Fable III right now. Getting everything set up took an interminably long time, and now I've reached the crux of the game, it's just an endless round of pressing buttons to please plebs in every village, with only the slightest mirage of customisation. Without the guiding stars, it's impossible to play as you'd have to search EVERYWHERE to fnd what you're looking for, but with the guides, you're just galumphing from A to B and pressing buttons. The combat is child's play too.

Still, I enjoy guessing who's doing the voices, and always being right.