Terrible design choices in otherwise excellent games?

[Vhite]

Any game that doesn't allow you to skip a cutscene before a boss. Fuck this sideways. Bosses are supposed to be hard. It should be uncommon that you beat a boss on the first try. So unskippable cutscenes before a boss are just wasted time. The only thing more frustrating than dying at the same spot for the twelfth time is watching the same 5-minute cutscene for the fifth time.

I can't think of specific examples at the moment, but I know it's happened before.

Any game that doesn't allow you to skip a cutscene before a boss. Fuck this sideways. Bosses are supposed to be hard. It should be uncommon that you beat a boss on the first try. So unskippable cutscenes before a boss are just wasted time. The only thing more frustrating than dying at the same spot for the twelfth time is watching the same 5-minute cutscene for the fifth time.

I can't think of specific examples at the moment, but I know it's happened before.

This. I'm playing Cave Story on hard mode and every time there's a boss, you never get instant retry. There is usually cutscene before every boss and save point is never right before the boss. If you die you have to repeat part of the level every time and if you die on last boss, you have to repeat previous 3 boss fights as well. But that's nothing. If you want good ending, game will add one extra hard boss and super difficult level with its own miniboss before him with closest save at the start of that level and don't expect health back either (I'm at this part still in normal mode, on hard mode you don't get any health at all). Only twice of maybe thirty times I got past that level and boss killed me then instantly. Still, I kinda enjoy having to fight for a good ending.

 

[IrenIvy]

I can't think of specific examples at the moment, but I know it's happened before.

Darksiders II? At least I couldn't find any way to skip many of pre-battle cutscenes.
In the same game - inability to bind Map to a specific hotkey; minor but annoying.
Some level designs looked strange to me (why have portals in the city where everybody can fly?)

Prince of Persia (2008) QTEs are very bad, especially those where you have to hit same button like bajillion times fighting with that big stone guy; the combat wasn't very good too.

Mass Effect (all games) - all characters have very similar youthful bodies, even Doctor Chakwas. Same for Dragon's Age: Origins (didn't play the second one)

Painkiller: Black Edition - gold and souls vanish in a short while if you don't collect them fast, and in the middle of the battle it might be hard and failure to collect sometimes breaks the challenge for a card.
(captcha: moot point, heh)

 

[Denamic]

As much as I love Borderlands 2, I hate the fact that you can't fast travel/teleport to the nearest fast travel station. So much time has been wasted just running or driving through areas. I can at least save and exit and then continue to get a semi-warp going, but can't really do that online. It's an unnecessary hassle.

 

[Saulkar]

Mass Effect 2 Thermal Clips. Who in their fucking mind would retro fit a 5000 round magazine of solid metal and heatsink with a thermal heatsink that limits the number of times you can fire your weapon to that of conventional weapons?! No one! I played the game on the hardest difficulty and loved it! The only issue was... I always fucking ran out of ammo in the first minutes of combat. I will take the damage to fire rate to heat dissipation ratio of ME1 any day over what ME2 offered.

 

[Reaper195]

Far Cry 3. So far, the game has been absolutely excellent...except the beginning. I was about ten hours in before I was in the cave your mates live in for a while, and found some bean that makes you hallucinate, as well as experience memories before being captured on the island. This should have been first in the game...not some half-arsed fucking montage. A reason to know/care about these characters, not just be some name that you can't even put a face to. Yes, the montage has names above the characters. For about a second each.

 

[sXeth]

Neverwinter Nights an its expansion had you rest to regain your spells for spell casters like clerics and the like but the problem was that they threw big groups of enemies at you in some expansions (Shadows of the Undretides) so you had to rest about every ten feet. I understand why the mechanic is there (DnD game) but I think they could have come up with something a little better. Shadows of the Undretide in particular had very small environments so you might be literately resting every ten feet in some sections.

It's more of "Making D&D games with a single character instead of a party" issue. (And whilst NWN itslef was largely meant to be MPed, SoU clearly wasn't (XP distribution meant you'd all die horribly underlevelled), and HotU didn't even work with MP until some modding happened)

 

[-Dragmire-]

I'm gonna go with the Fade in Dragon Age: Origins. I get that they wanted to change things up a bit, but good god, did they make a bad decision with that place. It was excruciatingly boring and time consuming. In my opinion, dangling a carrot in front of us with a few permanent stat bonuses and maybe some character development are simply not worth the giant amount of back tracking.

I didn't like the Fade on my first play through. I absolutely hated it on the second.

The Fade hits a very specific button for me. It's a unique world where practical limitations don't exist and deamons of sin tempt you with irresistible pleasure... and it's a barren location of floating rocks, libraries and corridors. The world is desaturated in color and everything(ok most things) try to kill you. How would anyone choose to stay here?!

Imagine if the fade had a far more vibrant color scheme than the real world, if it were full of unique locations and landscapes that couldn't exist in the real world that emphasized that while the place was clearly not real, you could see the draw the place had to weak minded people.

.... Being the fire guy was pretty cool though.

OT:

The flaw in Unlimited Saga makes the game unplayable for me, the story is great for what I played but everything you do from regular attack to special attack to lock pick to swim chance to disarm trap etc.. uses a roulette wheel.

I'm too tired to explain it so here's some gameplay footage:

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Mass Effect 2 Thermal Clips. Who in their fucking mind would retro fit a 5000 round magazine of solid metal and heatsink with a thermal heatsink that limits the number of times you can fire your weapon to that of conventional weapons?! No one! I played the game on the hardest difficulty and loved it! The only issue was... I always fucking ran out of ammo in the first minutes of combat. I will take the damage to fire rate to heat dissipation ratio of ME1 any day over what ME2 offered.

I concur, esp. since it didn't make any goddamn sense in universe either. Never mind the fact that Shepard, despite having been out of the loop for 2 years on account of being dead and getting the 6 million dollar man treatment, suddenly wakes up and not only seems completely unsurprised that he now can't fire his gun without one of those retarded heatsink things, but seems to know all about it.

 

[-Dragmire-]

-Dragon Age: Origins the encounter with Cauthriern. It was probably the single hardest fight in the game and designed to be lost in order to progress you to a prison level. But it actually beat you in real gameplay and if you managed to win (I did by exploiting the Arcane Warrior/Blood Mage combo) you could just skip that entire level and waltz on with the story.

... what?

*checks wiki*

Well, don't I feel silly. I had no idea that was a supposed to lose fight, I always quick loaded when it was clear I was about to die... Took quite a few tries until she glitched on some terrain and I took pot shots at her with my bow until she died.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

And while we're on the subject of irritating design decisions in otherwise good games, Random Encounters in any game that uses them. There is nothing more infinitely frustrating than trying to solve a dungeons puzzle, esp if it involves moving a bunch of shit around from room to room, than having enemies popping up every 3 seconds.

 

[triggrhappy94]

Then following it up with combat-based boss fights.

- The horrendous boss battles in Deus Ex: HR.

While I agree with you both on that point, throwing 3 points into the Typhoon(just 2 might work as well, just getting the basic version), makes the 3 first bosses and absolute joke. With 3 points invested, every boss takes 3 Typhoon hits and they go down. I didn't even die once, on my second playthrough, even though I went all stealth/no kills route.

Not even that. There's a way to beat all the bosses really easily. You only need a gun for one of them.

Spoiler

First guy: Throw the exploding shit at him
Second girl: Just load up healing items before hand. Unload on the giant battery/server things, then when the water becomes eletrofied jump continuously while downing painkillers to stay alive. Load back up on health items from the lockers, and repeat about two more times.
Third guy: Right when the battle starts, run to the opposite side of the wall just to the left of the naked man. He'll jump over when he's done shooting. When he reaches the top of the wall, hit B (or melee) and the battle's over.
Final boss: By this time, if you're playing it smartly, you should have enough of those hack items to buy every node in the console that controls the turrets. After that it's just a matter of waiting.

It's been a while since I played but all of that should be accurate.

OT: I really hate the BS assassin micromanagement thing in Assassins Creed. It's a dumb facebook game that takes a way from the game and has nothing to add. I say this after spending hours in ACRev maxing out all my assassins and maxing out all the assassins guilds in each city.

 

[Feylynn]

... what?

*checks wiki*

Well, don't I feel silly. I had no idea that was a supposed to lose fight, I always quick loaded when it was clear I was about to die... Took quite a few tries until she glitched on some terrain and I took pot shots at her with my bow until she died.

That's how it should be. =)
If you are given the chance to fight for your life and beaten in legitimate combat then something is being done right. Even better still if you are given even the slightest chance to succeed against something as imbalanced as the firing squad they try to crush you with in that fight.
That is what games should be doing.

None of this stupid effortlessly beating the hell out of a boss and then have them outplay the obviously inept cinematic protagonist that Devs throw in when they are to lazy to just beat us at a game.

 

[Nouw]

While Halo 4 isn't an excellent game, fun game but not excellent, it went completely backwards with armour customization. In Reach, the armour-pieces actually looked different from each other. They weren't all variations of each other and they actually looked distinguishable from each other by just a glance. Sure some of them looked real fuck-ugly but at least it added some variation! I'm really disappointed by 343 and how they handled the cosmetics. Hell, you still only have two options for colour instead of an option for each of the separate parts. /rant over. Yeah, I know. I'm ranting about cosmetics in a first-person shooter.

 

[saintdane05]

The Scarecrow segmens in Batman: Arkham Assylum. They're fine at first, with Batsy hallucinating strange things like his parent's copses, or Jim Gordon's death. But then there are these stealth/platforming sections right after... uch...

 

[QuartzQuadreant]

The cover system in Red Orchestra 2. It's certainly better done than in other games, but it often doesn't work. Besides which - having managed to open the game and get to a point where I can get some cover, I think I'm more than capable of doing it myself.

 

[Neonsilver]

Deus Ex: HR
- the bossbattles are obvious
- the takedown ability, it's to strong and since you only need one energy which regenerates you can take out everyone with it
- the exp bonus for using the takedown and for non-lethal methods when you defeat an enemy

Edit:
Mass Effect 2
- the heatsinks were already mentioned
-- they don't make any sense, no one would switch from almost infinite to finite ammo and while the heatsinks were one size fits all you could run out of ammo with one gun but couldn't use the heatsinks of another gun
- making shields/barriers/armor prevent the use of most abilities on an enemy
-- no explanation why it worked in me1 and it made most characters on the higher difficulties almost useless