Fucking shitty game mechanics

[samadriel]

[Re: crafting]

I don't mind crafting potions in the Witcher games because you can choose to craft them with particular positive side-effects depending on which ingredients you use, so it deepens the game a little. I've never enjoyed any other form of crafting in any game, it's so bloody tedious.

I haven't played 4 or 5, so I don't know if they still do it, but in Far Cry 3 I hated the limitations on carrying capacity of EVERYTHING that you have to craft your way out of; it even extends to your ability to carry MONEY, you have to craft new wallets out of pig-skin or whatever. I remember there was some ammo capacity upgrade or suchlike, that I desperately wanted so I could get the game off my back, but to get it you needed to somehow kill and skin fucking SHARKS. I don't recall there being any scuba gear or harpoons in the game -- I managed to kill a shark from land with a sniper rifle, then jumped into the ocean to chase its sinking corpse to the seabed so I could skin it. The water was too deep, so by the time I got to the shark's body, I just drowned. Purest bullshit.

[Barry Admin]

Sniping sharks! I'm in fits at you sniping a shark and then drowning while trying to swim to it, love it :-D

[Kryton]

There needs to be a mechanic that slows the PC down incrementally, so rather than runrunrunrunSTOP or runrunrunrunCRAWL it works as sprint > run > jog > walk > stagger > crawl > stop.

SCUM pretty much has this type of momentum/tiredness thingie. Sprinting slowly turns to running to jogging. Especially when you're carrying loads of shit / wounded.

[samadriel]

Sniping sharks! I'm in fits at you sniping a shark and then drowning while trying to swim to it, love it :-D

Tbh I was pretty pleased at managing to snipe a shark, I really didn't expect that to work... Maybe you're meant to steal a boat and go dynamite fishing with grenades!

[Mister Six]

Having to tap a button to simulate performing an action. Like in the Batman: Arkham X games, where opening a vent requires you to smash a button to simulate Batman gingerly poking it with his toes until it pops out of the wall. It's not making the game more realistic! It's just wearing out both my controller and my patience.

Mercifully you can turn this off in favour of just holding down the button in PS4 Spider-Man's disability options. God, I wish I was disabled! Lucky bastards.

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

It makes sense when it's supposed to be a strenuous action - e.g. Track and Field, or Microsoft Wanking Simulator 2003 - but when it's essentially just opening a door in Arkham, it is indeed a bit silly.

[Famous Mortimer]

Breakable weapons: Just a nuisance. 

This is the thing that put me off the Dead Rising games. Just let me run around slaughtering zombies, for fuck's sake! If I wanted realism I wouldn't be playing a game with zombies in it.

[bgmnts]

Yeah but Dead Rising puts a shit ton of weapons all over you. You'll find it hard to not find a weapon at any point of the game.

[petercussing]

Ja, plus is totally removes any sense of danger if you are just wading through zombies knowing your smashing stick will never bust.

That game mechanic is clearly to create a greater sense of peril and encourage you to use the whole host of weapon stuffs around you, similar to how everyone didn't get the first one was short to encourage you to play over and over whilst powering up your Frank and discovering everything in the game.

[Famous Mortimer]

Ja, plus is totally removes any sense of danger if you are just wading through zombies knowing your smashing stick will never bust.

That game mechanic is clearly to create a greater sense of peril and encourage you to use the whole host of weapon stuffs around you, similar to how everyone didn't get the first one was short to encourage you to play over and over whilst powering up your Frank and discovering everything in the game.

Don't give a shit mate

I want to slap zombies about with a chainsaw

[Mister Six]

Ja, plus is totally removes any sense of danger if you are just wading through zombies knowing your smashing stick will never bust.

That game mechanic is clearly to create a greater sense of peril and encourage you to use the whole host of weapon stuffs around you, similar to how everyone didn't get the first one was short to encourage you to play over and over whilst powering up your Frank and discovering everything in the game.

Aye, so here's a shit mechanic: a rotating slot-based inventory that auto-equips the next item, and also contains both weapons and healing products, so that when Frank's garden shears or whatever break in the middle of a zombie scrum, he'll suddenly start glugging orange juice, even if he's barely injured.

[Cerys]

Maybe that's deliberate - to emulate the way that the player would panic and fuck up if faced with a bunch of zombies in real life.  Developers can be sadistic fucks.

[Mister Six]

I'm not sure I'd fuck up by eating some raw eggs while the undead tore at my flesh.

But regardless - it's a shit decision.

[Zetetic]

I don't think that Dead Rising is really aiming to simulate anything about the experience of being in a zombie apocalypse, but perhaps I'm misunderstanding it.

[Cerys]

Emulate, not simulate, you utter radish.

[Zetetic]

I'm not sure makes any difference here, does it? Anyway, I don't think its mechanics are aiming at that sort of thing. The weapons-breaking is deliberately against realism.

[bgmnts]

Well yes and no. Weapons would break in reality. Its just done in a Japanese, over the top kind of video game way.

Anyway Dead Rising is fucking ace but surely if mechanic pisses people off its the escort system.

[petercussing]

^^^ This is the correct opinion, lolz

Aye, so here's a shit mechanic: a rotating slot-based inventory that auto-equips the next item, and also contains both weapons and healing products, so that when Frank's garden shears or whatever break in the middle of a zombie scrum, he'll suddenly start glugging orange juice, even if he's barely injured.

Yeah, but you are supposed to be thoughtful about how you order your inventory so that doesn't happen, and like Cerys says it does add to the sense of panic i reckon they were trying to engender on early playthroughs.

That what i mean about it being short and needing to play it over and over though, so you do stuff like that on first playthrough but then you learn on subsequent playthroughs what not to do.

[Phil_A]

This thread has reminded me Silent Hill Origins included both a stamina bar and breakable weapons, which anyone who's played the earlier titles will realise are absolutely ludicrous additions. Particularly absurd was the way endurance points were arbitrarily assigned to different items in a way that bears no resemblance to what the physical properties of said items are, so a golf club can last the same length of time as a TV set. Ridiculous.

It's one of the few games in the series I've never really been arsed about finishing, and I even beat Homecoming.

[shoulders]

Inventory space/weight. In the Witcher 3 for example I am able to sprint around with hundreds of bottles, herbs, bits of silver, metal, a couple dozen swords, 4 suits of armour, 6 pairs of boots, 20 goat hides, a skull, 4 mugs, a candlestick and a few monster heads without any difficulty. But at some point I lose the ability to sprint, despite it adding no realism or fun considering I can already carry a small army's worth of supplies without any difficulty.

They should go the other way and make you lug it all around on a cart.

[MojoJojo]

Rubber banding in racing games can get to fuck.

Have you played racing games without? Boring as fuck. Unless it's something like Outrun where other cars are just obstacles and not competitors.

[Bazooka]

This thread has reminded me Silent Hill Origins included both a stamina bar and breakable weapons, which anyone who's played the earlier titles will realise are absolutely ludicrous additions. Particularly absurd was the way endurance points were arbitrarily assigned to different items in a way that bears no resemblance to what the physical properties of said items are, so a golf club can last the same length of time as a TV set. Ridiculous.

It's one of the few games in the series I've never really been arsed about finishing, and I even beat Homecoming.

I don't get the hate for either, good as 1-3?  No, but Origins was a fine little game? on the PSP.

[tourism]

has silent hill consensus not thawed on 4 yet? I sort of liked how the escort mechanic didn't mean game over, but could affect vibe/ending.

[bgmnts]

I quite like 4 myself.

[Phil_A]

Yeah, I always thought 4 got an unfair wrap. It has some frustrating aspects, but it was aiming to do something different with the franchise that doesn't just involve copying the earlier games, and has a weird, eerie vibe that all it's own.

The only thing that lets it down for me is the sword-pinning mechanic failing to work at crucial moments, because having any of those floaty ghosts follow you across the latter stages is a recipe for misery.

[New folder]

I'd extend that to rope swinging .... in Wind Waker

As annoying as it might be, I remember it being just a small part -- small enough for me, personally, to be not all that bothered

The shittiest mechanic in Wind Waker, I find, is the fucking wind directions song (at least in the old version of the game). Really liked the sailing initially, but after a while it gets absolutely ruined by having to perform the wanky Wind's Requiem over and over again. More so towards the end, when you have fuck all to do except for gathering all the stupid Tingle charts. Perhaps if the game was finished this wouldn't have happened, but there are many things to be said about why Wind Waker is really good and really irritating at the same time.

[bgmnts]

Is there a game that DOESN'T have a shit mechanic? Even the best games of all time. I'm intrigued if we can find any.

[Consignia]

I mean shit is objective really. I absolutely love Dead Rising and some of the mechanics mentioned in this thread I find make the game what it is. If one person can describe a perfect game, I'm sure someone would find some aspect of it they would describe as shitty.

The closest you can get is probably from something simple with little room for manoeuvre. I'd suggest something like Tetris?

[New folder]

What about the first Portal?

The game is so minimalistic and to the point -- can't really think of anything being wrong with it

[Kryton]

Is there a game that DOESN'T have a shit mechanic? Even the best games of all time. I'm intrigued if we can find any.

Tetris? It's the perfect game. Isn't it?

Edit: Consignia go there first. Great minds etc.