I like a game to remember what it is.
By that I mean, if you’re going to be an FPS, be an FPS, if you’re going to be a Hack n Slash, be a Hack n Slash. Gradual changes in gameplay is perfectly fine and of course shakes things up a little, keeps you on your toes etc. But sudden changes are really unwelcome. I don’t like change, lol.
Examples of things gone wrong:
Change Places!
Darksiders. Bloody awesome game! Great fun tearing through it, nice mix of everything, beautiful to look at… Suddenly! Puzzles appear. The entire pace of the game, the feel of it, everything changes with little warning to very frustrating puzzles that simple were not fun whatsoever (anyone who played it through knows -exactly- the bit I mean lol). It was like an entirely different group of devs picked it up, did a chunk of the game, then handed it back to the original ones. If a game has me downloading a trainer, then it’s doing something wrong.
Obviously named after the Mad Hatter’s saying, quite fitting considering how insane such an act of video game vandalism is, lol.
The Citadel Syndrome
I know from a sales point of view, you want your first level to be the most visually impressive and enjoyable for the player. If you don’t hook them at the start, you likely wont hook them at all.
BUT. Why must so many games become lazy about three quarters in, with what I call the Citadel Syndrome. So named after HL2, which was great fun, until you get to the Citadel area’s. Some of the most uninspired, boring, dull, puzzle jumping wastes of space I’ve ever seen. It’s almost as if the developers create them in a linear fashion and simply lose all interest at about that point, and just throw any old crap in, and include tons of stupid jumping puzzles and other things that rarely ever make sense, in an effort to pad it out a bit more.
I named it after a ‘recent’ game, but this is something that’s been a problem in so many games since pretty much the beginning, and it bugs the hell out of me. Put more effort into the later area’s, the player just sat through and played all that, give them something more rewarding instead of insulting their intelligence and throwing a bunch of half baked jumping games at them.
Better yet, remove player jumping abilities entirely, so you don’t get tempted to cheat the player (worked for Dead Space 2)
The Romero
A great game, keeps you entertained, does everything right. Until the very end when suddenly it just gets stupid and you’re left thinking wtf?
Not named after John Romero, but named after George A. Romero, who’s Zombie movies I absolutely think are awesome, and consider his depiction of zombies as the defacto standard. Except he has a horrible habit of spoiling his own movies at the end. Namely Dawn of the Dead, the biker gang. For me it ruined the movie, it made me uncomfortable but not in a way that was probably intended, it was silly and it didn’t fit. Lots of games suffer the same way. Now I don’t mean games should have happy endings, far from it. But the endings should fit the rest of the game. Amnesia for example, great game, ending sucked and was silly compared to the rest of it.
The Movies
Oh boy… this one is a big hate for me… Cutscenes. Seriously, if there’s one thing I hate more than anything, it’s cutscenes. Worse than that - cutscenes you can’t skip ARGH! If I wanted to watch a movie, I’d put LotR on. I’m here to play a game, why are you forcing me to watch this shit, and yes it’s shit, I don’t care for your storyline, it’s been done a million times before (they always have) and the acting is more than likely, terrible. I do NOT want to sit here watching it, at all. I’m not even paying attention at this point, stop already, I’ve gone to make a coffee, I’m taking a dump, hell I went out to the store.
It’s even worse when the cutscenes include important information. Now you’re making sure we have to sit through that shit omg “uninstall”. Really, there are so many better ways to impart important info to the player than putting it in a cutscene and assuming people want to watch it. It’s bad enough the first time around, but bang goes replayability.
Usually when hatred of cutscenes is mentioned, someone brings up HL2’s cutscenes. They’re almost as bad. Yes you can move around in them, but you can’t actually progress until it’s done it’s thing and unlocked the door.
“but you need cutscenes to move the story forward!”
No, no, you really don’t. You write your game to do that without the need for them. Why not add changes to your game if someone skips something. shake it up a bit, but don’t punish them. For example, you enter a bar and the barman has something important you need to know, let the player find it out himself, don’t try be Ridley Scott. And if the player gets bored and walks off mid barman monologue, have him get all butt hurt and react, just like someone would if you walked off while they were talking to you lol.
That covers my big annoyances. The things I like, eh, not so easy to think of these, lol.
I like a game to be open, and I like to be able to do what I want. Now I’ve made games in the past, and I know how difficult it is making an open game compared to something linear. But The Elder Scrolls games shows it’s quite possible. I don’t want to feel like I HAVE to do the main quest/mission/story if I don’t want to, but like to know I can return to it and carry on when I like. Again the Elder Scrolls games display this nicely. You can play for as long as you like, visit practically everywhere, do everything and behave how you want, without even having to think about the main quest. Then whenever you’re ready, do a bit, then move onto something else if you get bored.
Course, for something so open to work, it needs plenty to do outside of the main story. I really enjoy exploring and finding hidden secrets and quests, little mini stories and glimpses into different situations and characters lives. I like being able to do my thing, but know that if I get bored, there’s still the actual game waiting patiently for me. I don’t like being told what to do all the time.
Also, for me, it greatly increases replayability, being able to do whatever I like. On the other hand, sometimes a game can be -too- open. A good example would be Elite II: Frontier. An awesome game on a scale yet to be repeated, and one of my all time favorites. But it was just too big, too empty and too limited to really keep you interested after you’ve done most things.
I like collecting things, and as I say, exploring. I like achievements, but not grinding. I like to be able to do as much as possible without being limited, once I’m told “no, you can’t do that without doing this this and this first” I’ll find a way to cheat it and get bored quickly. Yet if I did the same thing because I wanted to, without being told it had to be done. I’d be fine with it.
I like MMORPG’s but not playing with other people. I’m greatly looking forward to the 7 hero party update on Guild Wars.
I like a game to be a challenge, but not over the top. Good puzzles are fine, and as I said above, usually welcome, but then there’s badly designed puzzles. God of War (don’t remember which one) there was a puzzle that involved opening a wooden door, pulling a stone block out and getting it around the corner, jumping on it and up onto a ledge before the time limit ran out and killed you with spikes. It was a horrible puzzle, badly designed and the only challenge was how fast you could do it, it didn’t tax the brain, just frustrated it. That kind of thing is just annoying.
Ok I’m just gonna stop there cause I can’t seem to give a proper list of things I LIKE, just things that annoy me, I’m sorry, lol.
