Games you love, Broken Down

[Irwin126]

So you got a game you love, You've played it for hours and you had a good time with it.

Now break down what makes it good, While pointing the flaws.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Bioshock! Come on palberts, its fantastic!

Spoiler

Pros
-Brilliantly Written
-Amazing atmosphere, no pun intended
-Aggressive combat
-Expansive non linear maps
-Some RPG elements
-Great soundtrack and voice acting
-Big Daddies
-Would you kinda love this game?

Cons
-Very easy to become over-powered with plasmids and upgrades
-Not as scary as it thinks it is
-Moral choice system is a joke
-The more you upgrade weapons, the goofier they look
-Having to turn into a Bid Daddy
-Overly long hacking minigame for how many times you do it
-Gets a little repetitive in the end
-HAVING TO TURN INTO A BIG DADDY

 

[CritialGaming]

snip

I like how you put a spoiler thing on the screenshots, but you spoiler the game in your cons section outright.


Final Fantasy 7 is my favorite game of all time.

Pros:
-Story
-Combat system
-Super Bosses and secrets
-Graphics (for the time)
-Characters
-Music

Cons:
-Materia system is easily broken to the point were you can one-shot every boss in the game
-Some sections are overly padded
-Graphics did not hold up, making it hard to sit through replaying it these days
-The mini games suck
-Navigating the prerendered maps was clunky most of the time
-The remake MIGHT suck.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

In my defense the game is a decade old. So if you haven't played it by now, you are a bad person.

Conker's Bad Fur Day

Spoiler

Pros
-Hysterical
-Snarky and imaginative
-Wonderfully memorable characters
-Great parody of platformers
-Gerg the Grim Reaper, and don't laugh!
-Huge, wet, glistening, soft, bouncing flower...stamens
-The entire Saving Private Ryan level
-It's called context sensitive. Its sensitive to context. Oh and it makes this little noise ting! Makes a ting noise! Goes ting! *Ting* Ah, see, ting!
-Windy!

Cons
-Obnoxiously hard at some points
-The hoverboard lava race
-The Castlevania level was scary(as a 9 year old)
-Platforming was still wonky
-The Queen Bee. What a *****!
-The sewer level is hard to navigate
-I don't have that much bad to say about this game. I need to go replay it.

 

[SmugFrog]

-Would you kinda love this game?

Almost did, but you didn't say kindly! Bioshock is a great game though - not one that I can replay over and over again but it's an experience I think most gamers should play through for that story.

Lately there are a few different games I've been wrapped up in, but one I'm really conflicted about is Stellaris:

Pros:
- Beautiful graphics
- Reminds me of Master of Orion II in some ways
- Ship customization
- Diplomatic options (for an RTS game)
- Large Galaxy
- Lots of race / customization options
- Aliens feel alien
- Research and Weapons feel right
- Provides a bit of story to a Civ-like experience, in space
- Plethora of mods available
- Methods to prevent having to micromanage every planet

Cons:
- Mid to late game feels dull - there's a point where you know you're more superior in military power and nothing is going to stop you, and at that point the game just loses its fun factor and becomes tedious
- Diplomatic options - feels like you're begging the AI to love you and cooperate with you, other games have had better interaction
- Combat is kind of limited (units drive towards each other and just duke it out) - better with MODS that allow stand off ranges and others
- Vanilla Game REALLY needs some of the options provided by Mods. 1st play through is great, others you start seeing the flaws in UI etc
- Setting up a modded multiplayer game and enabling/disabling mods could use some improvement

 

[sageoftruth]

Bloodborne

Pros:
- The pacing of the combat is fast and exciting for a souls game
- The trick weapons are far more interesting than the basic swords, spears, axes, etc from earlier souls games
- The game is filled with deliberate WTF moments that will have you wincing and shaking your head in disbelief
- As usual, beating the bosses in immensely satisfying
- Parrying with guns allows you to attempt parries without putting yourself at risk sometimes
- Once again, the story is expertly weaved into the gameplay without being explicit about it
- Lots of easy-to-miss secrets
- Excellent level design, with unlockable shortcuts, countless branching paths and a very nonlinear feel

Cons:
- Outfits are actually less interesting visually than in previous souls games, probably because of the lack of armor suits
- The Chalice Dungeons get old very fast
- I strongly preferred Estus Flasks to Blood Vials, since the flasks didn't need to be replenished after death, and couldn't be hoarded.
- At times, it was easy to lose track of where you needed to go

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Oh sweet, a list thread!

Final Fantasy IX:

Pro
The story seems much simpler/easier to come to grips with
Garnet's character progression
The romantic sublplots
Vivi's character progression
Steiner
The music
Chocobo Hot and Cold is the best minigame of the PSX Final Fantasy's
Tetra Master is better than Yugioh
The cutscenes look beautiful

Con
Amarant is useless, especially when compared to Beatrix
Mandatory use of Limit Breaks once the meter is at full
Excalibur/Excalibur 2 side quests
Enemy/Boss scaling is still a pain in the butt

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Bioshock! Come on palberts, its fantastic!

Spoiler

Pros
-Brilliantly Written
-Amazing atmosphere, no pun intended
-Aggressive combat
-Expansive non linear maps
-Some RPG elements
-Great soundtrack and voice acting
-Big Daddies
-Would you kinda love this game?

Cons
-Very easy to become over-powered with plasmids and upgrades
-Not as scary as it thinks it is
-Moral choice system is a joke
-The more you upgrade weapons, the goofier they look
-Having to turn into a Bid Daddy
-Overly long hacking minigame for how many times you do it
-Gets a little repetitive in the end
-HAVING TO TURN INTO A BIG DADDY

But you never turn into a Big Daddy in the first game. There comes a point you make yourself LOOK like a Big Daddy but you never actually become one.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

SNIP

Distinction without a difference really. You do the entire cosplay, even smell like them, and hen trudge around with a little sister for an hour collecting dead bodies. Until Bioshock 2 came out, that was the closest we got to be a Big Daddy.

And it stopped the game dead.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Spec Ops: The Line

Pros:
- Military shooter, subverted by a Jacob's Ladder-esque narrative
- One of the great Et Tu, Player? games of the time (up with Portal, BioShock, Shadow of the Colossus, etc)
- Great voice-acting, reflective of character progression
- Nifty balance of ammo availability and weapon variety
- Good use of licensed music, for once
- Nice level design

Meh:
- Gameplay is fairly standard 3PS
- Some cool "sand 'em" mechanics

Cons:
- No rolling, awkward sliding
- The occasional turret section (not a fan)
- Team management is a bit pointless
- Texture pop-ins and blurry graphics, here and there

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Shadows of the Damned (don't love it, just played it, feel like doing it)

Pros:
- Engaging RE4-style gameplay
- Some freaky surreal visuals
- Funny comedic duo
- Creepy, intriguing world-building (the books)

Meh:
- The 2D shooter bits
- Bizarre for the sake of bizarre

Cons:
- Way too easy
- Way too short
- Generic storyline
- Anti-climactic ending
- Linear, boxy level design
- Superfluous upgrade system
- Shoot-the-glowy-bits bosses
- The villain and the bosses don't have much presence or personality (compared to RE4 or God Hand)

 

[Saltyk]

-The mini games suck

Whoa. The minigames suck? I love the motorcycle chase minigame. I played it all the time in Golden Saucer. I really hope they get that right in the remake.

Beyond that FFVII is my all time favorite game and I pretty much agree with everything you said. Thinking I may download it off Steam as it does seem to have some Mods that can up the difficulty.

Oh sweet, a list thread!

Final Fantasy IX:

Pro
The story seems much simpler/easier to come to grips with
Garnet's character progression
The romantic sublplots
Vivi's character progression
Steiner
The music
Chocobo Hot and Cold is the best minigame of the PSX Final Fantasy's
Tetra Master is better than Yugioh
The cutscenes look beautiful

Con
Amarant is useless, especially when compared to Beatrix
Mandatory use of Limit Breaks once the meter is at full
Excalibur/Excalibur 2 side quests
Enemy/Boss scaling is still a pain in the butt

I'd also add that while the stories of Zidane, Vivi, Dagger (Garnet), and even Steiner and Eiko are pretty engaging, the rest don't fair so well. Freya is basically forgotten by the story after she stays behind to allow Zidane to escape with Dagger. Amarant really doesn't have a story and only barely even has an arc. Quina literally just exists to be the Blue Mage.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

Super Mario Galaxy

Pros:
The soundtrack
The signature Mario controls that feel great platforming and ice skating
The visual flair
The Rosalina story
A perfectly crafted dificulty curve

Cons
Flying Mario completely wasted
Linear levels outweight explorative ones
Tutorials that are text promts on screen rather than something more organic
The camera and moving it being unnatural at times
Lives System

 

[CritialGaming]

snip

The difficulty mods are no joke. If you want to play that game on dark souls mode. The steam version is great for that.

 

[Level 7 Dragon]

Dark Souls

Pros:
-Compact level design that manages to balance effective shortcuts with a sense of danger and exploration
-Wide variety of enviorments from olympus-esque cathedral cities to dense jungles to lovecraftian landscapes
-A vast selection of weapons and armour that each tell a piece of an elaborate story which drastically altering the gameplay
-An deep story which uses a surreal fantasy world to discuss the entropic decay of the universe
-Likable NPC's with tragic fates
-Finely crafted opressive and solemn atmosphere working together with colourful enviorments
-Solaire
-The music that plays during the battle with the final boss

Cons:
-The weapons lack any sort of balancing
-The upgrade system requires a spreadsheet to avoid digging oneself into a corner
-Elemental infused weapons are a joke in the late game
-The PVP is unfair and broken
-The second half of the main campaign is obviously unfinished
-Lost Isaleth
-Bed of Chaos
-Poor tutorial which turned away quite a few potential fans

 

[Irwin126]

Bioshock! Come on palberts, its fantastic!

Spoiler

Pros
-Brilliantly Written
-Amazing atmosphere, no pun intended
-Aggressive combat
-Expansive non linear maps
-Some RPG elements
-Great soundtrack and voice acting
-Big Daddies
-Would you kinda love this game?

Cons
-Very easy to become over-powered with plasmids and upgrades
-Not as scary as it thinks it is
-Moral choice system is a joke
-The more you upgrade weapons, the goofier they look
-Having to turn into a Bid Daddy
-Overly long hacking minigame for how many times you do it
-Gets a little repetitive in the end
-HAVING TO TURN INTO A BIG DADDY

I was wondering what the hell that sound was lol. What's odd is that video won't even stop playing when hitting pause for me, and muting the sound only worked when I reloaded the page.

 

[Irwin126]

SNIP

In my defense the game is a decade old. So if you haven't played it by now, you are a bad person.

2 decades...

 

[Irwin126]

Dark Souls

Pros:
-Compact level design that manages to balance effective shortcuts with a sense of danger and exploration
-Wide variety of enviorments from olympus-esque cathedral cities to dense jungles to lovecraftian landscapes
-A vast selection of weapons and armour that each tell a piece of an elaborate story which drastically altering the gameplay
-An deep story which uses a surreal fantasy world to discuss the entropic decay of the universe
-Likable NPC's with tragic fates
-Finely crafted opressive and solemn atmosphere working together with colourful enviorments
-Solaire
-The music that plays during the battle with the final boss

Cons:
-The weapons lack any sort of balancing
-The upgrade system requires a spreadsheet to avoid digging oneself into a corner
-Elemental infused weapons are a joke in the late game
-The PVP is unfair and broken
-The second half of the main campaign is obviously unfinished
-Lost Isaleth
-Bed of Chaos
-Poor tutorial which turned away quite a few potential fans

There really isn't supposed to be a formal "tutorial" in a Souls game though, is there? The Asylum is basically there to help the player feel out what they're getting into.

The point is to throw you into a situation where you have to be observant and carefully plan a way forward. They really leave it up to the player, and that's what separates it from so many other by-the-numbers type of games.

 

[Trunkage]

Dark Souls

I'd add cons: Storytelling through item description and environments. While this can be a pro, it lead to people missing parts of the story, people making giant leaps in connecting the lore and people spending the next two game lore hunting. People were still trying to make something special about Solaire in 3 even so far as making him soup.

Pro: Jolly Cooperation

Edit: Doesn't give you a good feedback loop about whether you are going the right way.