Games you wish focused on one feature/mode to be better.

[Mister K]

OK, I probably didn't phrase the topic I wish to discuss properly, so I'll try to do it now.

So there is a game you liked. It's not the best game you played, but it is still good. However, you feel that if it only focused on one of it's features, it would've been a LOT better.

I felt this way about Divinity: Dragon Commander. This game has 2 gameplay sections: RTS and political simulator in fantasy medieval setting. Now, I don't really like RTS'es, but the second mode intrigued me. I was on a fence about buying it, but then I read that you can skip RTS parts by srtting it on auto battle. So I got the game and discovered that you can do it once per turn and every other battle on your turn has to be played. Ok, fine, easy mode and zerg rush.

Then I played the second mode and I really liked it. However it felt... unfinished: you couldn't negotiate a decission that would satisfy every faction, or at least make them not angry with you, you coudn't initiate anything yourself and could only decide on whether the law should be ratified or not and so on and on.

I feel that if Larian focused less on RTS mode and made it completely "card based" and focused completely on political mode, I would've had WAY more fun with this game.

What are your examples?

 

[Diablo1099_v1legacy]

I'd would like to see more in-depth hacking in Watch_Dogs.

They did do some neat stuff with that in the game, but I want them to explore that idea more and come up with new tricks and such, like how you could freak people out by abusing personal information like Dolphin fetishes and shit.
That and maybe head more in the wacky direction, I remember the mission with the Not!Dead Mou5e being the best one because it is just a few costumes away from being a Batman comic XD

 

[Sniper Team 4]

How about a Star Wars Battlefront single player mode? The cutscenes in the Survival mode showed a brief glimpse, as did the Training missions, of what they could have done with single player.

But not. Multiplayer all the way. Genius move, guys.

 

[Nazulu]

The genocide run in Undertale doesn't make any sense to me. Would've liked that to be written better.

Spoiler: Undertale Spoilers

Cognitive thinking seems to go out the window when you start murdering everything, including Sans not helping anyone and waiting too long to get involved, Alphy's running off instead of creating some real challenges with the lasers while Metatton could actually get away with his sadistic traps from before, Flowey waiting still to get his ass handed to him (as well as Asgore), and there's some other things I forgot that didn't make sense.

Not that the pacifist mode made complete sense either but I could swallow that pill easier.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

How about a Star Wars Battlefront single player mode? The cutscenes in the Survival mode showed a brief glimpse, as did the Training missions, of what they could have done with single player.

But not. Multiplayer all the way. Genius move, guys.

Wanst it just a few years ago that we were COMPLAINING about having tacked on afterthought Single/multiplayer in our games?
Why are we suddenly demanding it again?

I wasn't.

There is also the fact that both previous Star Wars games had single player in them. Granted, the first one wasn't anything to write home about, and while the second one was better, it wasn't amazing "I could replay this forever!" like so many people make it sound. But they were there and they were fun to play.
Seeing what they could have done with this new Battlefront, just based on the few cutscenes we get in the game, is nothing short of a massive tease.
So yes, I wish they would have put a bit more effort into any sort of single player mode beyond horde and token collection.

 

[FPLOON]

I would love if the level designs from Sonic '06 were better... or, at least, more adapted to each character's abilities...

One of the big problems I had with that game, outside of [almost] everything else, is that all of the levels are build like they were build for style instead of function... I don't care if you can use Sonic's gem to literally break the levels, Shadow/Silver lacking Sonic's base speed, or any of the other characters basically having to just deal with either their inferiority and/or their lack of playtime, I just want the levels to truly be build around the character in play like how it was with Sonic Heroes!

Other than that, if the first Afro Samurai game had enemy healthbars, then I would totally play that outside of its aesthetics...

 

[Nazulu]

I would love if the level designs from Sonic '06 were better... or, at least, more adapted to each character's abilities...

One of the big problems I had with that game, outside of [almost] everything else, is that all of the levels are build like they were build for style instead of function... I don't care if you can use Sonic's gem to literally break the levels, Shadow/Silver lacking Sonic's base speed, or any of the other characters basically having to just deal with either their inferiority and/or their lack of playtime, I just want the levels to truly be build around the character in play like how it was with Sonic Heroes!

I really like the idea of the level designs too, such a shame the execution is so terrible. Running through the random destruction on the burning highway and on the side of that giant waterfall looks really awesome. And I really like the idea of everyone breaking into the fortresses in different ways.

The game seems like it could've been a real masterpiece but was cut off so early that nothing could be thought out well. Everyone can probably see that I think.

 

[Verrik]

Spore. Just... Spore. That game has a wonderful concept (meaning the whole, creating your own creature and working your way towards space). However, it was not executed well. If they would have just worked on the game as a whole more (a lot more) it could have been way better. As it is now, it's just a guilty pleasure of mine.

 

[Evonisia]

How about a Star Wars Battlefront single player mode? The cutscenes in the Survival mode showed a brief glimpse, as did the Training missions, of what they could have done with single player.

But not. Multiplayer all the way. Genius move, guys.

Hey maybe that way they could introduce New Trilogy or Prequel Trilogy stuff in to the mix rather than stubbornly stick to the first three films like they keep saying they will.

Or Hell, maybe new stuff. Some of the best parts of the campaign in Battlefront II were the few between-trilogies missions.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

How about a Star Wars Battlefront single player mode? The cutscenes in the Survival mode showed a brief glimpse, as did the Training missions, of what they could have done with single player.

But not. Multiplayer all the way. Genius move, guys.

Wanst it just a few years ago that we were COMPLAINING about having tacked on afterthought Single/multiplayer in our games?
Why are we suddenly demanding it again?

I am a bit confused about this too.

Some of the greatest (or at least the most popular) multiplayer games never had a singleplayer. Battlefield (before Bad Company), Counter Strike, TF2, etc. Why do multiplayer-only games fail these days?

OT: I want Battlefield to focus more on class play. In BF4, the only differences between the classes now are essentially the gadgets. And even then a lot of the gadgets are similar.

When I see the avatar of a sniper, I think "That guy is a sniper, I can get in close". Then it turns out he only looks like a sniper, and in fact has an automatic weapon that he uses to fill my face full of lead.

 

[T_ConX]

Remember Me. That game DONTNOD made before Life is Strange. It was a pretty good action adventure with a fun Arkham inspired combat system and GORGEOUS art direction. A solid 7/10, but totally worth a play if you can get it for cheap.

Anyway, the feature that really piqued my interest pre-release were the memory manipulation segments. For those of you don't remember (me), the story took place in a futuristic Paris where peoples memories can be digitally stored and managed. The player character, Nilin, has the unique ability to actually edit the memories of others, and there were parts in the game where you had to go into other characters head and change their memories.

These were a lot of fun. You would watch it like a video, rewinding and fast forwarding until you could find an anomaly that you could edit, like moving a chair out of place. Doing this would cause a different set of events to occur within the characters memory and, depending on the overall outcome, would alter their behaviour in the real world.

These sequences felt a lot like puzzles. The end result was predetermined by the needs of the plot, but there were always lots of things you could manipulate in the memories, most of which would either lead to little or no change, or sometimes result in the character getting themselves killed, forcing you to rewind and find a new solution.

Skip to 2:40 for memory shenanigans


The downside is that there are only FOUR of these sequences in the game. One (in the video) is just a flashback, and has barely any bearing on the plot. Another is, I shit you not, you altering the memory of someone altering someone else's memory. Like Inception, but with memories. Oh, and that memory is of the same event as another memory you previously altered, so the total should really be 3.5 memories.

Another downside to their shortage was that they ended up losing a great avenue for character development. Hear me out on this one. The first sequence happens early in the game. After your escape from prison, Big Brother sends puts a bounty on you. A bounty hunter catches up to you, and while she's got you pinned down, you decided to hack her memory.

You arrive at a memory that occurred a few hours earlier. Turns out her husband is comatose from memory addiction, and she's paying for treatment to help get him out. While she's discussing the price with the doctor, she gets an email about the price on your head.

Oh shit! Now she's no longer some asshole bounty hunter, but a character with a easily sympathizable back story.

So what do you do?

You alter her memory to make her think that something went wrong during the treatment, causing her husband to die right in front of her.

When you get out of her head, she releases you because (she thinks) she has no reason to bring you in.

I honestly though this was the most chilling part of the game. I just made a woman believe that her husband died, so now she hates the system that she thinks killed her husband and is now willing to help me. It just felt really awkward and conflicting, and I actually liked that aspect of the game.

In fact, there were a lot of characters in this game that I feel could have benefited from similar treatment, like the Memory-Hunter turned Cop-with-a-Reality-Show to the Asylum Warden.

On the other hand, I did like how Life is Strange used time travel to flesh out it's characters. Clearly the Tell-Tale adventure genre was a better fit for DONTNOD than action adventure.

 

[Pirate Of PC Master race]

How about a Star Wars Battlefront single player mode? The cutscenes in the Survival mode showed a brief glimpse, as did the Training missions, of what they could have done with single player.

But not. Multiplayer all the way. Genius move, guys.

Wanst it just a few years ago that we were COMPLAINING about having tacked on afterthought Single/multiplayer in our games?
Why are we suddenly demanding it again?

Just MAYBE we realized that companies that took out of those features did not compensate the game with other aspects, but instead compensated their wallets.

 

[Something Amyss]

Wanst it just a few years ago that we were COMPLAINING about having tacked on afterthought Single/multiplayer in our games?
Why are we suddenly demanding it again?

In fairness, a few years ago I was being yelled at for suggesting that I'd rather have an MP-only game than a perfunctory story mode. This isn't a new, radical turn.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Wanst it just a few years ago that we were COMPLAINING about having tacked on afterthought Single/multiplayer in our games?
Why are we suddenly demanding it again?

Because like a lot of things it all depends on context. The first two Battlefronts had surprisingly fun single player modes which could be played in co-op, making it even more fun. Naturally people expected (or at least hoped) EA's Battlefront to continue and improve upon this aspect, but that didn't quite happen.

 

[Lightspeaker]

Wanst it just a few years ago that we were COMPLAINING about having tacked on afterthought Single/multiplayer in our games?
Why are we suddenly demanding it again?

Because like a lot of things it all depends on context. The first two Battlefronts had surprisingly fun single player modes which could be played in co-op, making it even more fun. Naturally people expected (or at least hoped) EA's Battlefront to continue and improve upon this aspect, but that didn't quite happen.

The first two Battlefronts barely had a campaign. They were basically bot matches with little bits of dialogue connecting them.

This seems to come up again and again and again whenever anyone starts discussing single player in Battlefront: to YOU they were a minor part of the game. But to many, many, many other people all they ever played in Battlefront was the single player and Galactic Conquest. This was the era of the PS2. Not everyone had their PS2 connected to the internet, so for tons of people 'multiplayer Battlefront' meant having a friend over to play split-screen.

So for all your bemusement as to why people care about it...for a huge proportion of the people who played it it was the primary draw for the game. And they removed it. It'd be like removing all the strategic stuff from XCOM in favour of only the tactical battle system but putting nothing in to replace it.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire with its brilliant Battle of Hoth level (before it was done to death in other Star Wars games). If only the rest of the game was like it...fortunately for me I pretty much got my wish with Rogue Squadron.

As for the on-foot portions that comprised the majority of the game, they had potential...if only the controls weren't so damn clunky. I'll never understand why the hell they decided to devote so many buttons to worthless alternate cameras when it could have been better utilized for something more practical, such as a decent strafing system. Also, Dash's chunky size and anemic turn speed feels more appropriate for an early Resident Evil title than a fast-paced action game. And would it have killed them to add a crosshair?!

 

[syaoran728]

I really wish Shadow of Mordor was a bit more difficult. While a large enough mob will kill, its a bit to easy to hide and get away. I just want an increase in the orcs' ability to prevent you from escaping and tracking you down if you hide close by. It would also be cool if the captain/chief you tried to assassinate would get a bonus for surviving and forcing you to flee.