Criticize Your All Time Favorite Game...HARSHLY

[afroebob]

OK. Ocarina of Time. Can we PLEASE talk about how fucking stupid that game was? Lets just start at the beginning, that fucking unskippable cutscene at the beginning, then one after the first boss? Christ, that was so boring! And don't get me started on the Water Temple. Christ, it was so goddamn shitty having to switch Iron Boots good Lord that was awful! And talk about no voice acting! All in all its got to be the worst game I've ever played through more than 15 times.

 

[RipRoaringWaterfowl]

Oh, Grand Theft Auto IV, how you never cease to anger me. Oh, I love you, dear, but your full of dents and scratches like one of your in-game cars after a ten minute police chase/jaunt. You vehicle handling leaves a little to be desired, smooth yet bulky, sending me powersliding, or should I say, powerslamming into everything when I try to turn. You gunplay is is like half-a Duke Nukem Forever, working, but only that. WHY CAN'T I CARRY MOLOTOVS AND GRENADES AT THE SAME TIME?!?!?!?! Oh, yeah, and melee? Doesn't even exist. Now, I love the direction the story, themes, setting are going, but heck, you took away my jetpack! What point is there in the dimensionality of Niko's character between his self and his job if his job has no jetpack? And of course, your crowbarred in moral choice system that pops in, like, twice, is meaningless. Making a little bit more of it would have been nice, though I know it's a tall order. 50-Foot tall order. Next up, the friends. I like 'em, but I'd rather be the one choosing when we get to hang out, not Roman calling in every in-game hour wanting burgers or hookers. Finally, I like you a lot, but you have flaws. So there.

 

[LtFerret]

Yoshi's Island

-You have to touch every coin because can't tell which ones are the red coins until you touch them
-Some of the bonus levels are just nightmarish
-BABY MARIO IS AN ANNOYING FUCK!

 

[Madara XIII]

The ones that increase your life and Devil Trigger.
For christ sakes man, READ. It's your friend.

Like I said, you must be terrible at the game if you need to use items.

Extended gauges are nothing more than a crutch.

You do realize the world doesn't have to cater to your standard of difficulty right?
The option is there. So long as I'm not penalized in a game that grades me harshly enough then I see no problem. Mistakes are allowed in games and not everyone can be a combo, glory hog master.

Stop it.

 

[bigfatcarp93]

Half-Life 2.

Very little I can criticize, but I'll do my best.

Well, the Rebel AI is bloody awful. I mean, I can only scream GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY so many times in one night, you know? Also, while the physics engine is great, it has some... eccentricities... which can actually lead to some truly hilarious situations. I'll never forget the time when I was simply walking across a street, only for a nearby wooden pallete to suddenly become seemingly possessed by a ghost, fly up for no apparent reason, and damage me with a strike to the head.

Good times.

 

[Bernzz]

Metroid Prime.

Some people hated getting the Chozo Artifacts, I guess. I liked it.

Some of the Metroids were annoying to face? Right, yes. The bloody Fission Metroids. I hated them.

There's not much else I can think of. Game was near perfect.

 

[lacktheknack]

Mirror's Edge:

Why did you insist on emphasizing combat?

You even made Mercury say, out loud, "one at a time, Faith" in the first direct encounter in the first real mission, where running right the hell by would have been faster, easier and more exhilarating. You knew just as well as everyone else that your combat engine was limited and lackluster, so why did you insist on putting it on a pedestal when you could have highlighted ANY OTHER ASPECT of the game instead, such as the poor aim of the guards allowing you to run from any situation?

Except the story.

Your story was forever hinting at something grander than it ever actually rose to. You said up a dystopian city, give us great ideas and scribblings on walls that hint at political brainwashing, then you drop it like a hot potato and solve the small substory instead. Actually, let me put "solve" in quotes. YOU BETTER HAVE A SEQUEL TO EXPLAIN YOURSELF.

I'm assuming, from Merc's comments, that the "beat everyone into submission" approach is canon, and it's not a leap to assume that cop-killing is as well (just look at the cutscene after the Boat mission). BULLCRAP. My approach, the "knock out four dudes, kill none" pacifist approach, is a REASONABLE canon, as it doesn't give the cops proper justification for shooting Faith up. She's running, they have vehicles, there's no reason for a gunfight. That would deliver your themes of corruption significantly better than having your sister's co-workers desperately trying to save themselves from a speeding psychopath.

Also, the last mission. Where did those gunmen come from at the very end? Why did they all DISAPPEAR when the helicopter crashed? Did Faith just imagine them?

Lastly, the valves.

If you're going to use valves, make them part of a swift and flashy puzzle. Not a door that takes ten seconds to open. Come on, those were the longest-to-open doors this side of Resident Evil.


...Man, I need to go play some Mirror's Edge.

 

[Naeo]

I don't really have a "favorite" game (because nur hur), but I'll dish out some criticisms of games I really, really like.

Phantom Dust:
-Half the skills are bloody useless. Short-ranged can almost always be beaten by medium ranged, and long ranged is hardly useful on half the maps.
-All the characters are deep and mysterious, which is kinda frustrating.
-All the missions are the exact same fucking thing. Go to this map/arena/same place you've been a thousand times. Then go kill the enemies that show up. Goddamn, there's only like a dozen maps to begin with, fucking hell, some variety would be nice.
-No one played it online any more by the time I got into it.

Morrowind:
-Cliff racers
-Cliff racers
-Cliff racers
-Not enough Jiub, you goddamn cretins, Bethesda.
-Ordinators do not forgive, and they do not forget. Because they are massive dickheads.
-Hardly any of the directions in the game were helpful. Like the map of the stones in Bloodmoon, which was fucking useless.

Half Life
-HEADCRABS IN AIR DUCTS. NO. NO. FUCK YOU. THAT'S BULLSHIT.

Saints Row 3
-After you finish the main storyline, the world feels empty and devoid of meaning. It feels like you're the only actual person in a sea of automatons in a city with a dull and boring color palate, and consequently, the game didn't have all that much replay value for me because I did most everything on my first two-ish playthroughs. It also seems to always be night--like, fucking always--but that's probably just me.
-The game tries WAY too hard to be "wacky" and to "not give a shit". And it kinda falls short in a lot of places, with a few exceptions. Like the whole plane bits in the beginning. Those were admittedly cool.

 

[sammysoso]

Mass Effect

- Combat feels clunky.
- Texture pop-in, and other issues from it's poor optimization.
- The bloated inventory system, complete with boring micro-management.
- Side-quests were always on boring copy-pasted versions of the same planet.
- Very few animations and character models.
- Too few combat music tracks, they reuse them a TON (The music itself is quite good though)

Mass Effect 2&3

- Ditching of the classic sci-fi vibe from the first game (music, sound design, etc...)
- Angst substituted for drama
- Too many characters (ME2)
- Loss of subtlety
- No coherent central plot
- Unsatisfying conclusion (or lack thereof)

 

[Madara XIII]

Metroid Prime.

Some people hated getting the Chozo Artifacts, I guess. I liked it.

Some of the Metroids were annoying to face? Right, yes. The bloody Fission Metroids. I hated them.

There's not much else I can think of. Game was near perfect.

Goddamn right it was near perfect....but yeah. The Fission Metroids made me hate life itself in that damn underground cavern before fighting Metroid Prime

 

[bigfatcarp93]

Okay, thought of another one: Mass Effect 2.

Combat gets repetitive, and I wish we had more time to get to know Kasumi and Zaeed.

I actually don't mind the planet-scanning.

 

[Slenn]

A favorite game? I don't play video games that much any more but I can list some.

Legend of Mana:
-The game looked and felt awe inspiring with all the scenes hand painted and drawn out with a well crafted story that was very childish and cute simultaneously. Some of the biggest quips I have with it are:
-Most of the time I felt like I was getting lost in a LOT of the places you put down on the map, such as the desert, the snowfields, the ruins, and especially the jungle and the junkyard.
-This may have been another game, but somehow I remember not being able to move when an enemy is about to cast a spell on you. I remember it making so annoying that a spell will immobilize you so that the game could register a hit.
-The boy character also looked incredibly feminine, and I often thought as a kid that it was just an alternate girl to choose from when you made a character.

Starcraft, Brood War:
-The sprite animation would bug out at certain points. This made bottle-necked units that were clustered together to turn back and go in the opposite direction. I know that the game technology was kinda limited at the time, but I wish I had a little bit more freedom with StarEdit, the level editor. Especially when Blizzard made a client to install the original Starcraft for Mac OSX without even making StarEdit have an equal version for the Mac OSX.

 

[lacktheknack]

The ones that increase your life and Devil Trigger.
For christ sakes man, READ. It's your friend.

Like I said, you must be terrible at the game if you need to use items.

Extended gauges are nothing more than a crutch.

Oh noes! Someone is somewhat less skilled at a game than you, and uses an implemented system that's meant for them!

Shove off and go play Street Fight IV on hardest or something. After all, you're TERRIBLE at Street Fighter if you have to use the crutch of easier difficulties. And Heaven FORBID that you'd be less than tournament-worthy at a game, right?

EDIT: While we're at it, weapons? Who needs weapons? They're crutches. Every REAL good player plays the whole game wielding nothing but their BARE HANDS when the game allows it. You'd have to be terrible at the game to have to use those damage boosters.

So, as I said, shove off.

ANOTHER EDIT: It's funny that you posted in the "Moments You Say 'F**k this Game'" thread in between your posts on this one. Because consistency is for wimps, right?

 

[C F]

-snip-

Goddamn right it was near perfect....but yeah. The Fission Metroids made me hate life itself in that damn underground cavern before fighting Metroid Prime

Ugh, I can attest to that. Also, the first half of the Phazon mines felt like a sluggish chore to get through.

-Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn-
Ugh, what's with all the point of view switching? I hardly ever get to use my favorite characters, my units are out there going wild with my preciously fragile high-caliber weapons when I'm not even controlling them (not to mention they don't get EXP), the story has a horrible resolution that was established within the last act just to justify teaming everyone up (wasting a beautifully-established plot), laguz units who aren't royalty are useless, and the freaking hero of the story doesn't show up until halfway through the game (which is just as well because he's a laughably broken tank who cleaves through everything even remotely resembling a challenge).

Plus, we get too many uber units. What's the point of using the Dawn Brigade? In the first act, they get the Black "my-sword-can-and-will-wreck-you-before-either-of-us-have-even-had-our-morning-coffee" Knight and the Nailah the Wolf Queen to bail them out of tight spots, and these are two units who are on par with your end-game material.

Okay. I think I'm done.
...
Waaait.
The frig was with the whole "Lehran" thing? Why can't we just have a straight-forward penultimate boss surrounded by a crapton of T2 and T3 units guarding the door to the real deal? I mean, I got all these blessed weapons and beefed up soldiers; I don't want to have to fight a bunch of magic light-bulbs with them. I don't even get combat scenes when I kill them. How am I supposed to admire the zweihänder gymnastics? And I definitely don't want to get shamed for killing an emotionless Bishōnen omincidal maniac when he all but asks for it.
Okay, yeah. Now I'm done.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

Myst hasn't aged all that gracefully, and a lot of the puzzles are just plain fucking random. The Selenetic Age tramway puzzle, anyone? That was just rage-inducing, seriously. The whole thing is very much over-designed and reeks of the Millers more or less giving in to Lit Geek fetishes. "Wouldn't it be cool if Myst Island had, like, an H.G. Wells-type rocket? Oooh, and what about a sunken ship! I fucking loved Treasure Island as a kid!"

Then there's Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines. Best RPG Ever, yeah, sure, but the bugs. For God's sake, man, the BUGS! Game breaking, system-locking, save-corrupting, questline-destroying and progress-erasing bugs! Even with the one official patch and the fan patches included! Goddamn you, Activision, for shooting Troika in the balls and forcing them to get an untested Source Engine beta!

 

[Squilookle]

Goldeneye (you know which one): You don't have multiplayer bots. True, consoles never even had a truly fluid FPS on them before you, and bots wouldn't show up for years to come, but the fact remains that if you had bots in multiplayer I'd probably still be playing it alongside Perfect Dark, instead of only playing your singleplayer (and loving it).

Also your Multiplayer level design wasn't too good. Too many dead ends and bottlencks. Thank god for Complex though- the best multi level in Goldeneye AND Perfect Dark.

Also Why U no HD remake?

Mercenaries Playground of Destruction: You had amazing variety in how to approach an objective, but stealth is never really one of them if you're on foot. Why include a suppressed SMG or shotgun if you can't ever sneak up to goons to use them on? Especially in the Ace contracts that were all at night? Also you tease us with the best aircraft in the game but don't let us buy them or find them parked anywhere. The only way to get an Apache is to snipe the pilot which affects faction standing. Also seeing jets fly over all the time and deliver all the great airstrikes without ever being able to use one yourself was a bummer.

Also Why U no on PC?

The Saboteur: The opposite of Mercenaries. Great on foot stealth, but poor effort with vehicles. Mercenaries had great Tank combat everywhere, but The Saboteur barely lets you touch the controls of tanks. And again, we see planes overhead all the time, but can't use any. Considering how much the game was about blowing up nazi installations, how awesome would it have been to steal a Stuka from an airfield and bomb sniper towers while chased by fighters, or even steal a 109 and duke it out with them above the citizens of Paris?

Battlefield 1942: Ahh Battlefield- I can barely fault your multiplayer, but I don't care what anyone says- Battlefield can and should do singleplayer. Honestly '42 could have had the most diverse singleplayer ever seen- it had gunplay, naval warfare, tanks and aircraft. You could have had various missions for each of them all over the globe, for different nationalities, too. You could have been the Operation Flashpoint of WW2, but instead you called it a day with botmatches, and in subsequent battlefields gradually downgraded singleplayer to almost nothing while focussing on singleplayer. Bad Company was hugely promising, but from BC2 onwards it became clear that you have no idea how to do singleplayer, so you're just gonna copy COD. I hate to say it, but your amateurish yet quirky Codename Eagle from way back in 1999 had a better singleplayer than BC2 and BF3 combined, and that's really saying something.

Just Cause 2: -Quick Time events. The ammo shortage I can deal with, but for the love of god you better not pull that QTE crap on us ever again. Hijacking worked fine in Just Cause 1, but with 2 you just shot yourself in the foot by copying Mercenaries 2's god awful system (pro-tip. Don't mimic ANYTHING from that terrible game). Let us hijack stuff instantly. Also the popped tyres and damaged engines didn't really enhance anything. Vehicles need Critical Existence Failure next time, like in JC1.

 

[Something Amyss]

I don't really have an all-time favourite game, so here's a couple:

Skies of Arcadia Legends
-Vyse is so saccharine to the point I sometimes wish to murder him. Sepiroth The Great Pansy Ramirez has a major character moment that is so ridiculous it makes "Because Ponies" lose all meaning.
-Grinding magic is freaking stupid and tiresome.
-Running from battles hurts your status really bad, so that even a few will impact you for...Certain things. This is the remake, and the original was supposed to be even worse.

Pokémon (series)
-Stories are usually pretty dumb. Like Forrest Gump and Homer Simpson somehow made a baby dumb.
-Event Pokémon.
-So many crap Pokémon. In a game with so many choices, it's a shame that so many suck. I'm not just talking the metagame, either.
-Extra requirements: Peripherals, websites, social thingies...GAH!

That was kind of weak. Ummm...

Red Dead Redemption
-The fact that there's like five towns and a thousand miles of untamed land is cool...For about five minutes.
-Marston spends 80% of the game threatening to kill guys if they jerk him around again. Over and over. The story modeis basically "Get this for me." "Okay, but if you fuck me over, I'ma kill you." "Good, now get this for me." "Okay, but if you fuck me over, I'ma kill you." "Good, now...."
-As such, Marston's one of the most ineffectual punk as protagonists I've ever come across.
-Controls are terrible and sluggish. Actually, apply this to most Rockstar games I like.

Saints Row 2
-Actually, I got nothing as far as harsh gripes. Damn.

 

[Mikejames]

Picking one I haven't seen yet..

Deadly Premonition, with your slog of a combat system and abuse of QTEs there is no shame in immediately starting over on easy mode, and if it wasn't for the writing I probably wouldn't have gotten through the first few chapters.
For every example of a lovely use of music in a scene, there's going to be one with a loud whistling tune juxtaposed to it.
The surreal dream sequences can be an interesting change of pace, but only when you're not forced to walk at the speed of a toddler down a path that made ME3's nightmares seem speedy; and despite the overall presentation some animations are stiff even by PS2 standards. Also, final boss. Saw it coming.

Yet for some reason I still wish to spread this experience.

Psychonauts:
Also, the latter part of the game contains a large tower section, where if you fall, you're going to fall back to the start. Also not helped by awquard jumps and the camera facing slightly downward while using Levitation.

The exploding rats... *shudder*

 

[YCRanger]

-Marston spends 80% of the game threatening to kill guys if they jerk him around again. Over and over. The story modeis basically "Get this for me." "Okay, but if you fuck me over, I'ma kill you." "Good, now get this for me." "Okay, but if you fuck me over, I'ma kill you." "Good, now...."
-As such, Marston's one of the most ineffectual punk as protagonists I've ever come across.

YES. So much yes. Everyone talks about how he is such a great protagonist. Maybe if they removed the stick that is firmly planted up his bum. They have all these other colorful characters but Marston ruins it by not playing off of them at all. Just "you better not be messing with me" etc.

 

[PunkRex]

Psychonauts

- Theres a difference between difficulty and bad level design, the Meat Circus was hard because it was timed and confusing. It wouldn't have been a problem if it was played like other levels or set out in a more linear path but I was running in circles half the time.
- The camera liked to mess you about in mid air.

Timesplitters 3

-Peeps complained there was a lack of variety, so they added vehicle and puzzle games... they did this badly. The vehicle sections were long and controled like arse, not to mention they often took place in tight corridors... and those puzzles were just easy and pointless.

Pikmin 2

- HOW DEEP IS THIS F*CKING CAVE!?!