Criticize games you enjoy

[Dirty Hipsters]

I think a lot of people have problems separating the things that they are fans of from their own identities, and see a criticism of something they like as being a criticism of themselves as well. It's wrong to see criticism in that way. Whether we like it or not, nothing is perfect, and we need to accept that even things that we enjoy could always be better in some way. It's important to understand that criticism of one part of a work doesn't make that entire work bad, nor does it invalidate our own enjoyment of it. As such I want us all to take a game that each of us enjoys and make 5 harsh criticisms about its design. If we're willing to criticize something that we love then maybe we won't get so uppity when others do the same.

Lets start with one of my favorite games from the previous generation, Dark Souls.

I love Dark Souls, it's a game I've played through many times. I love the world, I love the atmosphere, I love the combat, and I love the characters, and hell, I even love some of the games flaws and glitches. Despite this, there are a lot of things wrong with this game, and I'm willing to admit that.

Spoiler

1. The majority of the boss fights are not very good.

Dark Souls has some really iconic boss fights. Who could forget their first encounter with the Bell Gargoyles, Quelaag, Sif, Ornstein and Smough, or the Gaping Dragon? Those are incredible boss fights, and they're the ones people always think back on when they think or Dark Souls. There are however 22 boss fights in the base game and that's only 5 of them. The rest are not great. How fun are the Stray Demon or the Demon Firesage? Did you enjoy the 4 Kings? Do you even remember fighting Nito? The rest of the boss fights in the game are mostly either mediocre, or just plain bad in some cases.

2. The camera in this game is poor.

The camera is a physical object in the world, and any time you're in a space that's just slightly too small for it, or whenever you're fighting an enemy that's more than double your size the camera just spazes out and does what it wants. Not only that but Dark Souls 1's lock on system is the worst of the souls series when it comes to dealing with large enemies. In Demons Souls and Dark Souls 2 you're able to target specific body parts on large enemies (like being able to lock on to the legs, or the head), but in Dark Souls 1 the lock on always locks you on to the enemy's center of mass, their chest, which tends to be incredibly inconvenient with large enemies. You're forced to either forgo locking on entirely (making it difficult to track enemies and see their attacks), or use lock on and make it difficult to see your own character, making dodging more difficult.

3. Translation issues plague the the game.

There are translation issues everywhere in this game, from item descriptions to explanations of basic game mechanics. One of the first screens you see in the game asks you to choose a gift and the description of one of the gifts, the "tiny being's ring," is inaccurate (it says that the ring regenerates health when it actually just slightly raises your max health). These translation issues make the lore even more difficult to understand, and it was already a problem since the lore is seemingly unfinished and often contradicts itself.

4. Tutorials are sorely lacking.

The game does a very poor job of explaining its systems. The weapon upgrades don't make any sense unless you look up the flowcharts explaining them, and often basic concepts are not explained at all. The first time I played the game it took me probably 10 hours of playtime before I realized that I had more than 2 attacks with each weapon because I had no idea that different R1 and R2 attacks could be done with different flicks of the joystick and in combination with various dodges. Then there's the issue with the game straight up lying about certain stats (sometimes a weapon will have a higher or lower stat scaling than what it claims).

5. Most of the covenants are useless.

It seems that a lot of the covenants in the game were never really thought through, or maybe never finished and so certain covenants offer much better rewards than the others, and many of them are almost completely useless in terms of both gameplay a lore.

All in all Dark Souls 1 feels almost unfinished. Despite the fact that the level design is amazingly intricate and well put together, the world and enemy designs are fantastic, and the game has an amazing wealth of content, it all feels like there's a layer to the game that was never finished. Some of the boss fights just feel slapped together, the tutorial is almost non-existent, an the camera seems like it's still in its beta stage waiting to be patched, and there are many ideas in the game that just aren't as fleshed out as they should be.

Despite all of these issues the world of Dark Souls is just so beautifully tragic, so engrossing, and the combat is so fun and precise that all the other issues end up melting away because the game hooks you and doesn't let go. That's why even the most valid criticisms pale in comparison to all the things this game does right.

 

[aozgolo]

A lot of my favorite games are hard to critique because they have mods, and any game you can mod you can solve 90% of the issues you have with said game if you have the patience.

 

[RJ 17]

Nothing's perfect, and this is something we should all be able and willing to do: point out the obvious flaws in something we enjoy. If you're being honest with yourself, it's no big deal. Just because something is flawed - and noticing that it's flawed - doesn't mean you have to stop liking that thing.

Case in point, I'll use Dragon Age: Inquisition as my example for this topic.

- The mounts are next to pointless, given their difficulty on rugged terrain. Really there's only one or two areas in the entire game where using your mount would be prudent.

- Dual-Wielding rogues can only use 2 daggers. I miss being able to use hand-axes like in the first two games!

- No more blood magic. =(

- Only two possible voices...no matter what your race. And they're the same two possible voices for every race. I'm sorry, but neither of those choices really fit for my first character which was a Female Qunari Mage. I'm not saying she had to have a deep, booming voice and talk like the Ari'shok, but I certainly wasn't expecting her to sound so...human.

- The sidequests. Now I know now that you can do mostly all of them after you've already beaten the main story, but I wish I would have known that for my first playthrough. As an RPG player, my mind is trained to want to do everything BUT go to the main objective...this lead to me spending my first 30 hours of the game in the Hinterlands...the very first area of the game. I literally could have completed a full playthrough of Mass Effect (1, 2, or 3) in the time it took me to move on from the Hinterlands. Now I truly enjoy excuses to explore the world that BioWare created and those sidequests did quite well at that...but did we need that many?

- While I rarely used the tactics settings and options in the first two game...I would have liked something a little more expanded than the three basic options they give you in this game.

I'm sure there's more that others (and even I) could point out, but that's what I've got off the top of my head. Despite all of the above, however, I still say that DA:I was my favorite game of last year.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

A lot of my favorite games are hard to critique because they have mods, and any game you can mod you can solve 90% of the issues you have with said game if you have the patience.

Should a game or a game developer be given a free pass on mistakes just because the fans were able to fix those mistakes? If it takes mods to make a game worth playing then do you actually like the game, or do you just like the fact that the game engine is easy to use?

 

[StriderShinryu]

It feels like we just had this topic...

Anyway, as I usually say when this topic comes up, as much as I love fighting games they need proper tutorials. There's little point in picking out individual titles as it's a problem in nearly the entire genre. Currently tutorials in fighting games either amount to boring text boxes at best and combo challenges at worst. Boring text boxes make the intricacies of the game and the genre hard to actually learn and understand if you don't already know what they're talking about (at which point you don't really need the tutorial anyway). Combo challenges amount to not only "teaching" you things other than the fundamentals of gameplay but they also put the spotlight on the completely wrong point of the game. As anyone who actually knows how to play a fighter knows, combos (especially uber tricky fancy ones) are pretty much the last thing you need to learn; the use of a combo is the pay off of playing well in other areas and opening your opponent up for the opportunity. One of the most common misconceptions about fighters is that they are all about super technical button inputs and memorization yet this fallacy is something that combo challenge style "tutorials" actually completely play into. There are so many good fighting game tutorials out there on the internet that there really is no excuse for doing this wrong any more, and yet it's still done wrong almost every time.

Another thing that fighting games need is some form of better matchmaking, though it admittedly is something harder to solve than the tutorial issue. When matchmaking is just left to random chance, beginners need more often to be matched up against beginners, medium skilled players against medium skilled players, etc. Players should be able to seek out greater challenges if they want, but the default should trend towards matching those of even skill. This is about both making the pathway to learning easier for beginners but also helping the more experienced players grow as well. Another misconception about fighters is that higher skill/knowledge players love to beat up on beginners. This is not true at all. Those of higher skill want to improve themselves too, and fighting players they could beat blindfolded may not be as discouraging as it is for beginners but it is, quite frankly, boring. Most advanced players would much rather lose to a better player and learn in the process than win without having to try. Better matchmaking improves the game for everyone.

Capcha: bruce lee
I see what you did there, Capcha.

 

[spartenX]

no more heroes:

-the fights to get to the bosses feel very repetitive after a while, just you fighting through a bunch of henchmen if few variations between them

-the overworld always felt tedious when you simply wanted to get to your next mission

-the bike that you need to ride in the overworld (and once in a level) just doesn't control all that well

-needing to collect money in tedious mini-games to be able to advance

-.........I can't really think of a 5th.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Okami (dear god, here we go)

- As far as the PS2 version goes, the game has trouble recognizing certain symbols you can draw, like the fire spell ('Inferno'?) and several of the drawings you have to make for the taylor in Sei-an City.

- Issun talks too much and is always pointing out the obvious in BRIGHT RED LETTERS. I feel like you're never really done with the training wheels.

- On a related note, the game isn't particularly challenging. Some of the tougher sections include the Demon Gate Challenges and racing Tobi, but other than that it's a walk in the park (fucking beautiful as the park may be) from both a combat and puzzle-solving perspective.

- I wish there was a third fight with Waka. The game builds him up early on with a couple of fights, and while he's a recurring character for the rest of the game, you never fight him again.

- The third part of the game (Kamui) isn't as good as the first two parts. While the second act is a huge step up from the first, the third feels comparatively smaller, with more repetitive dungeon crawling and less overworld to explore (which in turn isn't as picturesque as Kamiki or Ryioshima).

- A minor flaw I might as well point out: the game goes to great lengths so that you don't bork a 100% run, BUT there's a certain animal that needs feeding that you can miss irrevocably past a certain point, holding off that 100% run. Never happened to me, but I'm well aware of it and it seems like an uncharacteristic oversight from Clover Studio.

That's it. I <3 Okami.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

no more heroes:

-the fights to get to the bosses feel very repetitive after a while, just you fighting through a bunch of henchmen if few variations between them

-the overworld always felt tedious when you simply wanted to get to your next mission

-the bike that you need to ride in the overworld (and once in a level) just doesn't control all that well

-needing to collect money in tedious mini-games to be able to advance

-.........I can't really think of a 5th.

The HUD is poorly organized and cluttered. That's something that's always bothered me about the game.

The framerate also tends to crap itself when there's more then 3 enemies on the screen at a time, even on the PS3 version.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

no more heroes:

-the fights to get to the bosses feel very repetitive after a while, just you fighting through a bunch of henchmen if few variations between them

-the overworld always felt tedious when you simply wanted to get to your next mission

-the bike that you need to ride in the overworld (and once in a level) just doesn't control all that well

-needing to collect money in tedious mini-games to be able to advance

-.........I can't really think of a 5th.

The HUD is poorly organized and cluttered. That's something that's always bothered me about the game.

The framerate also tends to crap itself when there's more then 3 enemies on the screen at a time, even on the PS3 version.

The Thunder Ryu gym exercizes are a pain to complete. It feels like you're halving your controller's lifespan with every set of QTEs.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Shadow of the Colossus.

The camera is trying to actively get you murdered. It tries to dynamically change view points a lot, as a linear game it can do that. Sometimes it shifts to a mode that is wholly unhelpful.

The rest of the game is pretty damn near perfect.

Bioshock.

It needed to be about 30% shorter and not to include everyone's least favorite section; where you play as a big daddy. Also, utterly binary moral choice systems. People aren't either saints or kitten stranglers.

Rome Total War.

HOLY IMBALANCES BATMAN! I get that the reason why the Romans conquered the world was due to their incredibly well trained and disciplined military. However, you did not need to allow them to ruin any kind of multiplayer diversity along with it. Seriously, their cavalry should not be as good or better than nations of people who did almost nothing else but ride horses.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

Morrowind. Oh where do I begin?

1. The game is not designed around new players. I get that it's an old game, but some of the stuff is just inexcusable. The game pretty much just explains the controls and the ui and then sets them off to do whatever without giving a good idea of what kind of things a new player should do. Also, who thought it was a good idea to have an enemy in a dungeon right outside the first town that can easily one shot level one characters if they don't have a specific character build?

2. Most of the characters in the game are basically interactive signposts that can tell you to where stuff is in whatever town they live in or point you along to the next part of whatever quest they're apart of. The fact that there's so much shared duologue between characters certainly doesn't help anything. I'm not saying all of the minor townspeople need to be super deep or anything, but give them a little personality for crying out loud.

3. Pretty much everything you do in this game is based on a dice roll, with the odds being based on your character's skills and stats. And then somebody thought it would be a good idea to do this with the crafting skills. Note, this isn't a dice roll to determine how good your potion or enchantment will be, but whether or not you succeed at making it at all. And if you fail, you lose all of the materials anyway. Especially problematic for enchanting, where the player determines what the enchantment is going to be, but the game gives absolutely no indication how likely it is to succeed, so you can waste very valuable resources on enchantments that have no chance of succeeding.

4. I know good soundtracks are expensive. But if you're expecting me to play your game for hundreds of hours, the least you could do is make a soundtrack that was more than thirty minutes long. It gets very old, very quickly, especially because somebody decided that there should always be music playing.

5. I'm pretty sure the developers forgot to actually design a game when making Morrowind. Most of the mechanics are repetitive, there's no semblance of balance whatsoever, and a lot of things seem to have just been thrown in there without considering how it would affect gameplay.

I'm pretty sure this list looks like it came from somebody that hated the game. I guess I'll just say that if I can criticize a game that much and still consider it my favorite game of all time, it must do something right.

 

[The Random Critic]

Dragon age Origin, I'm pretty sure I beat this game at least twice.

While mages are truly the chums of the game, my problem is how little you can do with your other classes with your subsequent playthoughs, along with the fact that some mage's spell are so much better than the others. (Cone of code, force field, I'm looking at you) While I do have some issue with mage duels in BG2, game-play wise they are still more interesting then DA:O. (and probably most rpg's when it comes to using magic as a tool for the art of mass murder) O, and you can dual/multi class, you think arcane warrior is badass, try Berserk/Mage, or Kensai/Thief. (The latter isn't really good but more just because I like watch big numbers appear and then watch dudes explode into little pieces)

I also don't believe that a single player game could benefit much from MMO mechanics. It took me quite a while to realize that the only reason I beat this and Dragon age 2 is purely for the story, and not much for the game play.

System shock 2, while the writing and the atmosphere should probably be considered as one of the best. This game can be brutal unless you have no pride and save-load like a bastard.

 

[SoreWristed]

God of War : any of them.
- Are my weapons made out of styrofoam? I've been hitting this dude for over half an hour and he's still upright. Going by the superior muscles kratos has and the way he grunts when swinging them, i should expect some form of impact swhen they connect. Instead they just plink off harmlessly and the dude didn't seem to notice it. The only weapon that had some impact was the token slow heavy weapon you get in every game, but those expect you to be frameperfect against bigger enemies before they interrupt you and ruin your day.
- Going into an area, you can always recognise when dudes are going to spawn. 'this is an area where baddies will spawn' 'this elevator is going to be slow as fuck and i expect baddies to spawn every ten feet' 'once i push this block on this button, baddies will spawn because otherwise i'll have solved the puzzle too quick'
- Button mashing to open every effin door in the game. I sometimes encounter normal humans being slaughtered, and i really wonder how they got past the seven doors i had to mash open to get here. Was there a doorbell i never saw?

Any online shooter/game :
- Remove everyone's right to communicate, either by microphone, typing or teabagging in morse code. 90% of players don't communicate to let other players know what doorway they are going to cover and when they spot enemies where, but more to call other players an assortment of slurs and insults. Remove all custom communication, and implement a standard system of communication that runs on standard lines. And i'd blow up everyone who spams it without reason.
- if that isn't an option, a point system that removes your right to communicate if you spam or insult too much.
- the right to remove control from griefing players to let them be mobbed to death.
- A form of software that self-destructs players' computer who would normally recieve a VAC ban for cheating

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Spec Ops The Line:
1)Game requires for you to be in a very specific mindset to get into it.
Sure, this can extend to a lot of games, but for Spec Ops, it is absolutely crucial. The entire game is built around a specific mentality, namely that you don't expect any of the tragedies you enact later on and that you are morally self-righteous throughout. You also have to consider that this game is about choice as much as it is between player and player character interaction. I still stand by the axiom that turning off the game is still a choice here...and unless you are fully invested then the game just falls apart.
2)The actual mechanics are really boring.
Again, this is kind of the point, to lull you into a sense of ennui so that the game can pull the rug out from under your feet. However, it is entirely possible that the bog-standard gameplay will make you so bored that you decide to forget the game and quit it. The tactical options are a joke, and very few situations require you to plan ahead, so the game isn't even all that difficult.
3)The Heart of Darkness references are arbitrary.
They really don't do anything, aside from maybe you expecting to see the general guy being the one running everything in secret. However, this 'twist' is revealed incredibly early on, so perhaps it's there again to make you feel self-righteous? To be honest though, they could've called the general anything else and the message still could've stuck.
4)The multiplayer is horrendous and shouldn't exist.
Single-player: great, Multiplayer: CoD 3rd Person Mode. It's pretty bad and it only exists there as padding for the investors, though it doesn't look like it detracted from the single player campaign. Nonetheless, it is a turd sitting on an otherwise excellent game.

I think it's pretty apparent that I find it difficult to criticise Spec Ops The Line. It's like Ulysses: tedious, not really about anything and gets over-hyped, but going into it with the right equipment leaves for a fantastic experience.

 

[Fappy]

4. I know good soundtracks are expensive. But if you're expecting me to play your game for hundreds of hours, the least you could do is make a soundtrack that was more than thirty minutes long. It gets very old, very quickly, especially because somebody decided that there should always be music playing.

I could stomach every criticism but this one. Yeah it's short, but I have played Morrowind for over 1,000 hours across multiple characters and it never got old. Every time Peaceful Waters played I couldn't help but hum along with it!

 

[GladiatorUA]

Dota2 is making me a toxic asshole. Well, no. It unlishes my inner toxic asshole.

You are locked in a 30+ minute match with 4 other people on your team and 5 people against you. And those people will do everything to sabotage victory, starting from picking crap and doing stupid shit at every stage of the game. It's wonderful when there are people like this are on the other team, but it's not always the case. And it's rage inducing. In a bad way. It's wonderful when it all works out, or when you lose and think that the other team truly deserved to win. Buuuuut... It's a very stressful game.

 

[Jak2364]

Dragon's Dogma is one of my favorite games ever made and I'll be super disappointed if it doesn't get a current gen sequel or even a remake with shiny 1080p graphics TLOU Remastered style.

Anyways, while there was a lot of great stuff about the game, its story was horrible and parts of it were just plain stupid. The expansions story was really good in my opinion so I hope they do more like that in the future, making stories based on the weird ass lore they made in the original story.

Another problem is its difficulty. First playthrough, you could never tell what you were getting into, while that was great for the dungeons (especially the end game one) it was horrible for normal travel. "What's that? You need to reach this area for your next mission? Well guess what, we're going to put some bandits that can one shot you there. Good luck!"

Last problem I can think of is the map size. Since they put a lot of work into all the dungeons this can be somewhat forgiven, but I'd really like to see a much larger world in the sequel, They talk about lots of other lands that seem like they'd be interesting to explore, and everywhere seems to have good story potential.

Oh wait, one more; The Pawns were useless in the endgame content! Throughout the normal story it's fine, all you need them to do is to hurt stuff, but in the end content you needed them to be hurting things in specific ways or doing their actual combat role (tank, healers, that kind of stuff) and they weren't very helpful in that regard. Hopefully they allow more specific control over their actions in the sequel, something like FFXII's gambit system would be nice instead of the general role picking they had.

 

[Nazulu]

Can't help but criticise, makes me feel better about it then.

Super Metroid

Spoiler

1) The Ghost Pirate is easier than the previous bosses. It should get harder as you go, especially in games where you get upgrades.

2) Putting a scanner in wasn't a great idea. The magic of the game was discovering all the hidden secrets by looking out for clues, but some people literally just go into every single room, scanning every inch of wall, making it a chore which leads to them becoming over-powered (and I know this because they tell me it ruins their experience). And for some reason, there are other secrets that can't be scanned when they are no different from the others. It's silly.

3) The special weapons are mostly useless. Though most people won't discover them when playing the game the first time, I don't see the point of adding these other abilities when it's easier just to shoot or bomb 99% of the time.

4) I think they over did it with the sand traps. Some people don't like coming back to Maridia because of the sand, being that it's really easy to get stuck into it, making you press jump many times till you get that one clear leap for freedom that's not clear to predict. Not 100% I could call this a flaw, but it does piss off many, and I can't say that mashing buttons just to escape sticky terrain is the best design.

5) The Mother Brain is not a challenge, though the game represents it as the most powerful of the lot. The final boss should be the meanest mofo on the block, but unfortunately everyone discovers it's nothing, taking away that special final stage anxiety.

6) Bonus: While I believe this is the best Metroid game by far, the bloody Metroids hardly make an appearance at all, and they are all pretty weak too. Well, besides the story Metroid.

Shadow Of The Colossus

Spoiler

1) Driving the horse is a pain since holding one side for more than a second can make you do really sharp turns or a 180. And I have to say, having to find the perfect spot to activate the 'jump on horse quick time event' will slow you down.

2) Does the flying snake colossus even attack? I never found out since it's a push over. And once again, bosses should get more difficult as you progress. I also love how people praise this so called boss, but has anyone ever died from it? Over-hyped fluff! The sand snake was far superior.

3) The camera likes to look at other things or twist the angles during the action, which can be annoying obviously.

4) The game had some glitches that made me have to start up again a couple of times. One with a nearly see through rock that came out of nowhere blocking an entrance to one of the colossi, another where I ended up in limbo since I fell through the flaw and couldn't do anything about it. Though most other people didn't get that so I guess I'm lucky then.

5) The last couple of colossi are just a fucking joke. You won't die from them unless you get really unlucky. No, their gimmicks are that their weak spots are a hair ripping chore to get to. I don't consider it clever when something that is hardly threatening can take forever to kill. It's not a puzzle, just a tedious slog that needs really good timing to land in the right spot, which is lame since some of the colossi before them were actually scary because of how dangerous they were.

6) Bonus: The auto heal does not work in this game. I don't care what anyone says, it is so easy to just run away or find a safe spot to get all your health back. The newest Call Of Duty's even does this better since you have more chances of dying behind cover. Some colossi will keep you on your toes, but most of them won't.

 

[Kyrian007]

I've never understood the fanboy mindset that makes admitting faults in something they enjoy impossible. I've never in my life seen a "perfect" piece of any entertainment media and I can find faults in ANY book, movie, tv show, video game, album, youtube video, ANYTHING. Admittedly those faults could be pretty shallow, or even something that bothers me personally that others don't mind.

I loved Far Cry 3. The story was complete ass from the halfway point on... but I loved that game. I just finished Shadow of Mordor... had a blast with that game. I could have done without all the LOTR refrences and would rather they just cranked out some other very generic fantasy story and made it a new IP... but I loved Shadow of Mordor. One of my favorite games of all time is Chrono Cross. But really game, did we need that many characters? How many times did I need to play it to get them all and all the endings? Oh and some challenge please Chrono Cross, you have to almost TRY to lose a fight.

The Walking Dead... both seasons. Quick-time events really aren't gameplay, couldn't you have found a better way to give us your AWESOME story rather than a point and click style adventure with quicktime events? And add some challenge, don't make it the "q" key ALL the time.

See, gimme ANYTHING that people shout from the rooftops is "teh best evar" and I'll find flaws. Or just go watch ZP, Yahtzee does the same thing and it is much funnier. Hell, Yhatzee called Portal sublime from start to finish. Really Portal, could you be any easier and shorter? And did you NEED to explain the longfall boots, why not also explain why Chell's HEAD seems to take no damage from impact with walls and ceilings?

See how easy that is, nothing is without fault.

 

[Mister K]

Guys, Final Fantasy X is my favourite game of all times. But seriously, how much WORSE could be the design of a main character, a.k.a. Tidus. I mean, he looks like a fashion designers nightmare.

Take a look at it:

Spoiler

Uneven shorts, short hoodie, armored gauntlet on clearly weak but fast character, etc., etc.

A few months ago, I found his early concept design on FF wikia. Here it is (hint: he is on the left side):

Spoiler

While Auron and Yuna in this picture look a lot worse than their final versions, Tidus looks amazing. Well, compared to the first picture at least. Who on FFX design team sniffed something bad and decided that the final variant is a good one?

Also, Kimahri got f-ed up. In previous games, blue magic was used as another spell-casting school. Here, however, it is another kind of Overdrive (Limit break), meaning it won't be used as often as needed. And there like only 10 of them. And considering That Kimahri is more of a warrior, most of his overdrives suck. I understand why Nova and Mighty Guard are not avaliable for spamming, but fire and water breath? Come on.

I'd really like it if he had greater variety of speels to pick from and only the most OP ones were locked behind Overdrive bar.