Time to shit on your favorite games!

[Dalisclock]

The Mass Effect Series

-Planet Scanning was interesting, the first few times I did it. After that it was just a tedious chore.
-The Drive by decisions in 3 feel really lazy.
-The combat in 1 feels clunky.
-The inventory system in 1 is far too complex and cumbersome and I pretty much have to sell off all my extra equipment after every mission unless I want to convert everything to omnigel.
-The Hacking in 1 is just obnoxious.
-Almost all the side missions in 1 are samey and annoying.
-The Heat Sink system for the weapons after 1 is a cheap way having limited ammo without calling it that.
-Evil Martin Sheen forces me to do the story missions in 2 whether or not I'm ready to do them, which almost runs smack dab into the invisible time limit. Also, I'd really like to be able to tell off Evil Martin Sheen a lot more often.
-The invisible time limit in 2.
-Kaiden is boring, Jacob is boring, Jack in 2 is really, really abrasive(and a jerk to boot), Kasumi has to be bought and doesn't really do much(other then be rather amusing in 3), Vega is annoying.

Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers
-Finding the invisible trigger to end some of the early days.
-GOLEMS!
-Incredibly short distraction window at the Police Station on faster machines(anything remotely modern).

Saints Row 2
-Forcing you to use a sword in some of the Ronin missions(with no reason given at all).
-The Entire Junk Mission at the end of the Ronin Arc. It railroads you for no reason, makes you use a sword to kill the boss(when you have no reason you can't just shoot him) and is just really frustrating. A terrible end to an otherwise great arc.
-Really bad clipping/visual bugs in some cutscenes(and it's not fixed on the steam version).

 

[Dalisclock]

Saints Row 3
-Forced Tutorial missions that take too much of the game, and if you've played the game before it gets frustrating not being able to do things before the tutorial mission.
-Shaundi is a ***** for the entire game.
-You need to sacrifice your crew(and Burt Reynolds) to shoot down the flying aircraft carrier and tell off the world. It's frustrating because "evil" ending feels more in character but I don't want to kill Burt Reynolds to get it.
-Parts of the game feel really unpolished(like being able to use the downtown crib after STAG forced you to flee it).
-Angel is useless.
-Some of the gang activities are buggy and won't complete if you kill them with an aircraft.

Kerbal Space Program.
-The game(at least the last time I played it) doesn't tell you how to do much of anything. Achieving orbit is a feat in itself when you first start the game.
-You need to download mods in order to get a flight computer, and a flight computer is almost required to do anything interesting.

 

[JagermanXcell]

Persona 4.
-The beginning's terrible pacing man....
I'm off the train, when do I Persona? I'm home, but when do I Persona? I went to school, when in the hell do I Persona? I'm in the TV when do I- OMG YES GAMEPLAY tutorial... I'm at school again and Yukiko is the target, can I frikin Persona now? Yes, she's in the TV, let's go in so I can Persona! I'm back in the TV, can I Persona n- YES, GODDAMN FINALLY.

Fallout New Vegas.
-Boy this game is great when it isn't committing FPS seppeku.

Dark Souls
-Lost Izalith and Bed of Chaos are why we can't have nice things. This whole end game stinks.

Borderlands 2
-I can't wait to have fun when i'm level 30 in 8 hours.

Devil May Cry 4.
-BACKTRACKING. So after all that backtracking, boy am I in the mood to face the same exact bosses again. Everything involving the board game gimmick is a shit. Just when you think it's over... here is every single boss a 3rd time+the BACKTRACKING+the board game. Surprise, Final Boss.
"Capcom in charge of giving employees time to finish games, 2008"

Metal Gear Solid 3.
-Stalking stalking stalking *grabs a guy while nervously holding the circle button*
Now to interroga- aaaand I slit his throat.

 

[T_ConX]

My all-time top five, in alphabetical order:

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

The menus. Eating and first aid always felt like such a hassle, and sorting through equipment was always a pain.

Neverwinter Nights: Hoards of the Underdark

The huge battle at the end of the second act is always such a mess.

Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne

Way too grindy, especially in the later game.

Shadow of the Colossus

Continued replays do nothing to sooth the pain caused by the continued absence of The Last Guardian.

Umineko no Koro Naku ni

It ends...

 

[Dragonlayer]

The Mass Effect series

I love these games. I loved them so much I rebought the entire trilogy for a new console and then recompleted them from the very start every time a new DLC was released for the third game. And that's not even mentioning the countless hours I spent raging at the absolutely useless random rewards system crushing all beneath my synthetic tread as a Geth Juggernaut in the online portion. That said however....

- The first game just has terrible gameplay mechanics in general: Shepard can't jog faster then an asthmatic cripple with a zimmer frame and can manage a sustained sprint for a whopping three seconds, which makes exploring any large environment a hassle (sloooooooowly running from one end of the Citadel to the other looking for Keepers will be forever etched into my mind). Despite being a highly trained operative of humanity's most prestigious special forces, the commander is in serious danger of blowing his own feet off every time you aim a weapon, unless you have *perfected* a weapon skill and even when you can get the bloody thing to stop jiggling in your hands the over-heating system kicks in after two bursts and takes a half a minute to cool down, even if the weapon is chock-full of cooling down mods. Travelling in the Mako is hilarious but ineffective, almost every single explorable planet has bugger-all to actually explore on it and the Krogan berserker chaps who regenerate all their health upon death and gain a secondary shield are the height of bullshit! Oh, and the side-quests are tedious as fuck: I had to have several Steam chats open on my laptop while 100%ing the game.

- While thankfully the sequel is a *massive* improvement in just about every way, there are still elements that grind my gears. As has already been alluded to, the planet scanning is incredibly boring and largely pointless if you load a save from ME1: credits are not exactly difficult to come by so all the scanning is good for is ensuring you survive the Suicide Mission. On the topic of carrying over saves, your accumulated Paragon/Renegade points make every choice pretty easy (although admittedly this is an improvement as it shifts the decision from "Can I afford the choice I want?" to "Should I make this choice?"). The new characters are a mixed bag as well: Jack is every worst angsty emo teenage ***** cliche thrown into one very unappealing package and Miranda is pretty dull as well, not helped by the camera's unhealthy fixation on her backside.

- Not going to invite more endlessly bitching on a topic already bitched to death by talking about single-player, but I will vent my frustration for the multiplayer's chief failing: the goddamn random rewards system. Whoever came up with that concept needs to be dragged into the street and lynched by the public, or perhaps just called a moron because it is a complete bloody failure. What is the bloody sense in creating a system that forces you to earn a ridiculous amount of in-game money to buy crates with no bloody guarantee of getting anything useful!?

The Mount and Blade series

- The insane amount of freedom this game offers is paradoxically it's greatest weakness - there is zero story to follow so once you tire of rape and pillage, boredom can hit you in the face like a sledgehammer as you realise how pointless and repetitive is!

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Red Orchestra 2/Rising Storm - Level ups giving stat increases in a multiplayer FPS because that makes soooo much sense/Here's a first person cover system, shame you should NEVER use it/Hey that far-away flamethrower didn't get me too bad looks like my guy might be able to put himself out-nope he's burning to death anyway, damn/Hey this prototype assault rifle was used in extremely small numbers in these areas if at all and will completely piss on the weapon/class balance in this game, better include THAT one

Insurgency - Our team made it to the key choke points first, gg guys/Their supports and demolition guys aren't equipping their MG's and explosives, gg guys./One half of our team keeps getting killed then gets to watch the other half camp unimportant areas noone ever crosses for the entire match, bg guys.

Mass Effect 3 MP - You keep getting every character but the couple you want in pricey packs? Nope, no shop where you can just pick stuff you'd like GRIND MOTHAFUCKA GRIND

 

[Dizchu]

System Shock 2 is my second favourite game of all time... but it has one of the worst, most rushed endings I've ever seen.

Borderlands (the series as a whole) has a great aesthetic and humorous designs (that remind me a lot of Ratchet & Clank). But despite this, the humour provided by the characters themselves is a lot more hit-and-miss. Sometimes downright cringeworthy.

Doom is my favourite game ever... but that's mostly due to the mapping community. The original maps were VERY hit and miss, some of them were absolutely awful. John Romero's maps were overall quite amazing though.

 

[Pink Gregory]

Metal Gear Solid series: getting caught is such a chore. Escaping and evading doesn't ever feel good, and even when you do manage it, you have to wait for the alert timer. If I had a choice between the current countdown system and just having it automatically restart the level, I'd probably choose the latter.

I've been weighing up the possibility of trying a 'game over if caught' playthrough of the series, European Extreme and all that, but I've yet to decide.

I have to admit, the only time that you're not going to run and hide, waiting for the alert to clear is when you're trying to keep a pace for the sake of the ranking. I know that most people hate timed missions, but this is where I'd like to try them.

Think I still *do* prefer this system, though. Even if it is easy to cheese by just running back to a previous screen (which I'll admit I did a few too many time in Snake Eater). I'd like it to be persistent, myself.

 

[blackdwarf]

Love Dark Souls, but Damn has it a bad tutorial. sure it explains the gameplay, but you get barely, even in instruction booklet, a explanation about stats and menus of the game.

 

[Yuiiut]

Borderlands (and, to a lesser extent, skyrim).
As mentioned upthread, it's really, really, really annoying when the only way difficulty increases (both in level progression and *harder* difficulties) is the fact that it just now takes more sword swings to kills things, forcing into a narrow amount of preset paths. Borderlands is the worse, with the New Game+ being just *the exact same enemies are now twice as hard to kill, unless you use this one specific tactic* that just kills any real character customisation (want to play Zero as a sniper in True/Ultimate Vault hunter mode? Too bad, as you can't use slag effectively, you're effectively doing 1/4 the damage of another, slag using build. When it comes to ultimate vault hunter mode, a fully charged up shot to the head with a sniper rifle might not even kill a run-of-the-line-mook, which destroys combat effectiveness, as all your skills are based around taking a long time to make one, precise, shot. Skyrim's similar with 'Boss' monsters being just the exact same thing you just fought, except with more sword swinging. This is amplified by the lack of (IMO) a decent combat system (particularly in melee), which makes trying to play 'sword and board' rather dull/painful compared to mage/archer.
Crusader Kings 2:
The amount of bugs that slip through is ridiculous. I really love that the game is still being updated and having features added, but when it results in massive bugs rendering Muslims unplayable for 6 months, or the period after each major patch when the entire game tends to be rendered near-unplayable, it can get immensely annoying. However, I don't really mind the DLC for it, as it pays for all the new features being added with each major patch.

 

[Story]

Okami
-The sim-lish like voices are so very annoying. I get that you didn't want to do localization or something, but there is already sub titles just make them speak Japanese.
-The beginning of the game is so freaking slow, I want to scream.
Um...
-Your sequal was mediocre at best

The World Ends With You
-Riku is a little winy Emo, and that's annoying.
-The 2nd to the last boss is harder than the final one
Um...
-You don't have a sequal, and that's sad.

 

[Casual Shinji]

The Last of Us

- The gameplay pacing takes a significant dip once you reach the Fall.
- The Strangle vs. Shiv mechanic is terribly one-sided toward Strangle. Seriously, the only reason you really need shivs is for one or two Clickers at best, the rest is just for opening shiv doors, which are supposed to be a risk/reward factor not the main purpose.
- The spore risk in-game makes about as much sense as being bitten by a zombie in Resident Evil and not turning into one.
- Very early on when you're just out of the Boston QZ, the game throws grey filters on nearly every nighttime/dark area, instead of just making the scene appropriately dark. And it's not like the game can't do dark, for some reason it just doesn't at that point. I mean, you have a flashlight, right?
- Missed oppertunity by not making Ellie's backpack available for Joel to store stuff in. Would've given her more of a gameplay presence as well.
- The flamethrower should've never been in the game. It turns every infected encounter from then on into pest control.
- The Left Behind DLC sucks donkey balls.

Wolfenstein: The New Order

- For a first-person shooter the shooting action really isn't too much the write home about.
- Having to charge the laser sucks the fun out of using it.
- The Perks system is counter-intuitive. Instead of your playstyle being rewarded, you'll mostly force yourself to play a certain way just to get the 'bigger clip' or 'more damage' perks.
- The hair on cetain characters, especially Anya's, looks horrendous in cutscenes.
- The Boss encounters offer no strategy other than 'unload weapons and hope you survive long enough to kill Boss'.
- The soundmix is jumbled.
- The game drags itself out near the end.

 

[L. Declis]

Metal Gear Solid series: getting caught is such a chore. Escaping and evading doesn't ever feel good, and even when you do manage it, you have to wait for the alert timer. If I had a choice between the current countdown system and just having it automatically restart the level, I'd probably choose the latter.

I've been weighing up the possibility of trying a 'game over if caught' playthrough of the series, European Extreme and all that, but I've yet to decide.

I have to admit, the only time that you're not going to run and hide, waiting for the alert to clear is when you're trying to keep a pace for the sake of the ranking. I know that most people hate timed missions, but this is where I'd like to try them.

Think I still *do* prefer this system, though. Even if it is easy to cheese by just running back to a previous screen (which I'll admit I did a few too many time in Snake Eater). I'd like it to be persistent, myself.

Honestly, the "Game Over if Caught" mode is fun, but only if you've played the game enough to kinda learn not only all the tricks, but also the general hiding spots/guard layouts; games like Snake Eater are bad for this because the guards tend to be a bit more spread out and harder to see, and nothing will piss you off like a guard looking up while taking a piss and the entire thing ends.

However, it does that the relatively easy "Ah, fuck it, I'll just shoot my way out" option, but I must warn you, the torture scenes make a European Extreme playthrough damn near impossible. While in MGS1 you can tap out, in MGS2, Solidus will fuck you up over and over again; my EE playthrough ended when both I and my friend after an hour couldn't get past Solidus choking you out.

MGS1, Snake Eater and MGS4 are, however, great fun for EE. EE is also more fun if you can be bothered to collect EVERY dog-tag.

With EE, you have to REALLY know how to fight bosses or they will similarly fuck you up surprisingly quickly, and you need to know how to find ammo quickly. Also, they tend to be stingy as fuck with rations (if they even give you any), but if you're in combat, you tend to lose anyway. Just don't fuck up with bosses.

 

[Pink Gregory]

Metal...Gear?

Must admit, I'm not liking the idea of fighting Vamp (especially) with that kind of difficulty. Very little you can do in that fight. I suppose I just want to play with more patrols and guards, and a less potent tranquiliser gun. I want to see what it makes me do.

I just finished MGS1 on hard for the first time, and that doesn't make you very hardy. Which, of course, I preferred. Clutching out Vulcan Raven with claymores felt amazing, Psycho Mantis was just a pain because he gains a little too much health for what he is, Liquid was ace, Metal Gear Rex...well if I'd used all my chaff grenades beforehand I'd probably have got stuck.

Boss balancing ain't so good, but the rest I think I'd appreciate.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Well I'll need to throw a recent favourite of mine under the bus. Game called Robocraft, where you craft your own robots/vehicles block by block and then chuck them into a TDM showdown. Sounds too simple at first, but once you experience the full potential and see every single block adds weight, size, strength as you expect and comes apart as it should during combat then things get really cool.

And while the game had a great steady development up to this point they messed up bad, suddenly decided to sign on with a third party anti-cheat company which instantly broke everyone's game. After a patch now at least some people can run the game, but they will be thrown out of matches or the game at random because no one tested shit before they went live with it. And now the devs are completely unwilling to go back to the reliable build until things are worked out.
Not to mention that this third party software grants itself free access to all your vital system modules without notification of permission, it also collects data and automatically sends it to the third party vendor without permission, to a company that has no obligation to keep anyone's data to themselves.
If these guys turn out to be some sort of scam artists then Robocraft devs have single handedly compromised millions of computers to the fullest extent, that shit can get you locked up for a long time not to mention the entire company going up in legal flames.

 

[Lieju]

Resident Evil 4. Quick time events. AAAAAAARRRRGGGHHHH.

Also Pokemon, WHY am I playing the same game again and again with slightly different assortion of cutesy magical monsters and the exact same plot?

Eternal Darkness... Ngh, I love it too much, but the developers were apparently jerks.

Dragon Age 2 had a lot of issues mostly because it was rushed out. My biggest issue was the city didn't feel alive or change enough as the time passed.

 

[babinro]

Heathstone

- why only 10 deck slots and no option to buy more in a free to play game? You're limiting your players ability to experiment with decks and get more involved in the game. It directly impacts the players enjoyment and your bottom line. Give us more for free or let us buy more room.

- Why such a limited card selection? You have taunt cards that span most casting costs so why not do the same with each other keyword? Where's my 10 cc neutral taunt card? Or my 6cc silence card? etc, etc

- Where's the quick play mode? You know that people troll you and let the timer run. Let us enable a mode that reduces turns to 30 seconds and make it so time doesn't count down during spell/attack animations. This way Miracle rogue can still cast 8 spells in a turn while enjoying faster play.

- Improved matchmaking...now. Sick of facing hunters 80% of the time? The game should search for more class variety by default. This would lengthen the load match screen but we'd have the option to PLAY NOW and simply find the next available match regardless

- Matching with similar players collections. Why is it newer players with 0 legendaries can face off against legendary warrior players with the entire set in both casual and rank play? Give each card a hidden value based on their actual in game strength and match people based on these values. I've gone into way more detail about this on the official forums but it seems like a great system in theory.

- Sick of aggro decks? That's because Blizzard refuses to release easy to obtain control cards. make this happen. Let free to play have the option to choose control or aggro without forcing them into aggro because of dust costs.

 

[freaper]

snip

Oh boy, you're gonna love the Long War mod then. It fixes pretty much every point you mentioned (besides Vahlen bitching about grenades).