Game development sins

[EzraPound]

RPGs that are designed in such a way so that you can't go back to get an item that you've missed, you have to do it at a certain time and after that, you're screwed. A game like Fable is good at ensuring you can backtrack to complete any of its side-quests/collect items; a game like Final Fantasy X is not.

 

[Bronzebow]

Battles that you had to lose to continue with the plot/dungeon. I remember a few older jRPG titles that used to do this, Breath of Fire being one, where the puzzle for a particular room was that you HAD to die and/or run away from one of the random encounters to proceed. The only clue you had was some NPC telling you, "Sometimes, you have to run away to get ahead." It didn't help matters that the dragons you could turn into could pretty much one shot anything that wasn't a boss.

I remember some obscure game or other where you had four team members; three of them ended up getting mind controlled and fought the fourth, which you controlled. If you beat your three team mates (which wasn't difficult), it was the same effect as you losing all three team members. Die, load save point, go through dungeon again. You had to just sit there for about thirty seconds and let them kill you.

At least Chrono Cross did SOME thing right, in that the battle you had to lose midway through the game was done right. The boss either killed you quickly or had a cutscene doing so if you were in a new game +.

 

[EzraPound]

Final Fantasy VII had some terrible obscure things you could only think of finding with a strategy guide. Breeding a gold chocobo? Getting Vincent? Yuffie?

Haha, don't get too n00bish I found Yuffie w/o a guide on my second play through.

 

[hamster mk 4]

There is a list of game development rules made by game developers for game developers. Here is a link:

http://www.theinspiracy.com/Current%20Rules%20Master%20List.htm

It expresses a lot of your gripes in more general terms.

 

[Altorin]

Static Cameras, or Cameras controlled with the shoulder buttons

 

[AntiAntagonist]

Boss battles that require the player to use controls or operations entirely different from anything used previously in the game.

Loading screen or unskippable cinematic after each death. Either would be forgivable if they took less than 3 seconds total, but they never do.

 

[AntiAntagonist]

Games where easy and normal are too easy, and hard and really hard are too hard, there isn't any middle ground. Honestly, a game is tested on the default, and designed for the default difficulty.

Strangely I had that problem with every Microsoft RTS game. I remember a slider with something like 10 different settings, but it never seemed balanced enough.

 

[varulfic]

Boss battles that require the player to use controls or operations entirely different from anything used previously in the game.

Resident Evil 4 did this for the first boss... and it was awesome.

Final Fantasy VII had some terrible obscure things you could only think of finding with a strategy guide. Breeding a gold chocobo? Getting Vincent? Yuffie? Finding everyones LVL 4 limit break? Seriously at least try and let people know that SOMETHING IS RIGHT HERE and you can find a clue on how to get it here at least.

I totally agree on this. I didn't even know Yuffie existed until I read about her on the internet. A walkthrough said that you have to run around in a forest for a while to find her. I ran around in that forest for like ten minutes before she attacked. Seriously, I can't even imagine how someone could find her without extreme luck or a strategy guide.


Half-life series, I love you but I gotta be honest, your difficulty sucks. Pretty much the only complaint I have about this game is the difficulty settings - on hard, instead of it being more enemies or something, your weapons just deal less damage and you take more damage from enemy fire. This is nothing but lazy. What it means is that the damage you've gotten used to is completely thrown out the window on higher difficulty levels. The freaking magnum can't do one-hit kills on hard! The gun, which is my favorite weapon is practically rendered useless in most fights, only making a difference against the stronger enemies. What's the point of the gun if you have to use a 1/3 of your loaded bullets to defeat the most common enemy in the game, the enemy which always comes in groups of two or more? Bottom line is, difficulty settings should not work this way.

 

[The Iron Ninja]

Claiming to have local co-op during development and then not having it without even bothering to say that local co-op was dropped from the game. So when I get the game and rush on home, giddy at the prospect of co-op fun with a friend, I find out that if I wan't to do co-op I have to play with some racist, homophobic twat who's voice hasn't dropped yet over xbox live.
-Mercenaries 2

 

[Sir_Substance]

Including things in a game that can only be discovered/beaten with the help of a strategy guide. The Final Fantasy series is terrible for this: Zodiac Spear, Yoshimitsu, finding Ozma, etc...

Final Fantasy VII had some terrible obscure things you could only think of finding with a strategy guide. Breeding a gold chocobo? Getting Vincent? Yuffie? Finding everyones LVL 4 limit break? Seriously at least try and let people know that SOMETHING IS RIGHT HERE and you can find a clue on how to get it here at least.

I agree that the Final Fantasy series was terrible with this.

Also Ruby and Emerald Weapon made me cry (Especially Ruby...).

i found yuffie....

 

[meatloaf231]

Claiming to have local co-op during development and then not having it without even bothering to say that local co-op was dropped from the game. So when I get the game and rush on home, giddy at the prospect of co-op fun with a friend, I find out that I have to play co-op with some racist/homophobic twat who's voice hasn't dropped yet over xbox live.
-Mercenaries 2

Not having local co-op is a sin in itself. Even worse when they make co-op online, but not local. Halo 3's 2-local 4-online is a sinful medium. It's like 1.5 condemnations.

 

[Anton P. Nym]

Not having local co-op is a sin in itself. Even worse when they make co-op online, but not local. Halo 3's 2-local 4-online is a sinful medium. It's like 1.5 condemnations.

Halo 3 has off-line co-op, just for fewer players than online, and that makes it worse than a game without off-line co-op at all? Doesn't make sense to me.

I'd say the most heinous sin in game development is probably "the puzzle only the developer and his aunt can solve without a walkthrough." A close runner-up, though, is "the unskippable cut-scene right after a checkpoint/save-point." (aka, the "lookit all dat juice" sin.)

-- Steve

 

[fix-the-spade]

Quick time Events placed at apparent random. If they were placed logically (such as matching a button sequence to reload your gun faster, a bit like Gears of War) then QTE's wouldn't bother me. But having PRESS X NOT TO DIE appear suddenly for 1/10th of a second for no apparent reason is just plain wrong.

 

[miawallace]

Umm... games that reuse buttons. I played a game on the PS2 once (though I can't remember what it is) where X was jump and if you double tap it it's a kick and then it didn't really use any of the other buttons. Come on! I can't think of a console that didn't have *enough* buttons to stop stupidity like that.

The worst example of this I've encountered is in GTA4, where they've assigned the same button for 'get in a taxi' and 'hijack a car'. Did it not occur to the developers that this might cause a few problems???

Another one is games which have been ported to the PC from consoles and seem to think PC users only have 12 or so buttons available to them. So instead of having all your weapons tied to the number keys (for example), you have to go to a menu, select weapons, and then scroll through them all to get the one you want instead of just pressing 6. Or scrolling through each of your 10 different kinds of weapon looking for the right one as ten guys attack you.

Neither of these things actually ruin the games, but they are unnecessarily annoying.

 

[PersianLlama]

Console shooters without complete splitscreen support. "Remind me again- why do I own a console?"

Definitely the biggest one for me too, I hate playing with idiots over Xbox Live (PSN isn't as bad because the PS3 doesn't come bundled with a headset). So local multiplayer is my favorite multiplayer.

 

[meatloaf231]

Not having local co-op is a sin in itself. Even worse when they make co-op online, but not local. Halo 3's 2-local 4-online is a sinful medium. It's like 1.5 condemnations.

Halo 3 has off-line co-op, just for fewer players than online, and that makes it worse than a game without off-line co-op at all? Doesn't make sense to me.

I'd say the most heinous sin in game development is probably "the puzzle only the developer and his aunt can solve without a walkthrough." A close runner-up, though, is "the unskippable cut-scene right after a checkpoint/save-point." (aka, the "lookit all dat juice" sin.)

-- Steve

It's worse because the game has 4-player co-op capacity, but they decided that you shouldn't be able to use it offline.

Same thing with CoD4's local multiplayer. Custom classes? Nope, online only. Ok, well maybe I can bring a friend? Nope, no split-screen online.

 

[alwaysrockon]

having an unbeatably boss would be the worst deadly sin.
ever played brute force?

 

[RufusMcLaser]

I despise unskippable cut scenes and the entire save point system. I want to save whenever the hell I damn please. OFP and COD3 are different types of the same offender, OFP with its limited checkpoints and once-per-game save (which could be worked around if you knew how to alt-tab out and delete or rename the save game) and COD3 with its odd placement of save points.
Oh, add the recent trends in DRM to that, will you?

 

[GenericWit]

Umm... games that reuse buttons. I played a game on the PS2 once (though I can't remember what it is) where X was jump and if you double tap it it's a kick and then it didn't really use any of the other buttons. Come on! I can't think of a console that didn't have *enough* buttons to stop stupidity like that.

The worst example of this I've encountered is in GTA4, where they've assigned the same button for 'get in a taxi' and 'hijack a car'. Did it not occur to the developers that this might cause a few problems???

Aye! That's exactly the type of stuff I mean though I've seen a lot worse. I actually think I played a stealth game where pushing a button for a "short" time killed a victim and pushing it for a "longer" time merely knocked the victim out. LULZ. No joke. Now, I've learned to firmly push down buttons because I've had a character not jump many-a-times, but firmly pushing it was sometimes considered a "longer" time. It was pretty much completely random. I even checked the manual. Haha.

 

[Technomage333]

Pixel searching! This is the worst puzzle you could put into a game! I once was stuck for forty five minutes in a game because I didn't pick up a leaf which was the key to a later puzzle. I WAS A FREAKING GARDEN and only ONE leaf could be picked up.