Tiny, insignificant details in games that really bother you

[BrawlMan]

English voice actors being unable to pronounce Japanese names correctly despite having the Japanese dub as a reference. Probably the worst instance of this I've ever seen is in the first Danganronpa. In Japanese, protagonist Makoto's name is pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable and all three syllables being fairly clipped, like 'MAkoto', but in the English dub everybody says 'maKOHtoh' instead. At first I played it with the English dub, and I could deal with that, but Celestia Ludenberg, in her over-affected accent, says his name correctly... except the implication is that the way she says it is incorrect. At that point, I switched to the Japanese dub and never looked back.

Despite that problem, the English voice acting is excellent in these games; especially the second game. The second game is better about the pronunciations as far as I remember. Speaking of Celestia, she has the best voice acting in the first game. You got to give props to the voice actress.

I got it time stamped to the game in English.
​

 

[Drathnoxis]

English voice actors being unable to pronounce Japanese names correctly despite having the Japanese dub as a reference. Probably the worst instance of this I've ever seen is in the first Danganronpa. In Japanese, protagonist Makoto's name is pronounced with the emphasis on the first syllable and all three syllables being fairly clipped, like 'MAkoto', but in the English dub everybody says 'maKOHtoh' instead. At first I played it with the English dub, and I could deal with that, but Celestia Ludenberg, in her over-affected accent, says his name correctly... except the implication is that the way she says it is incorrect. At that point, I switched to the Japanese dub and never looked back.

What's even worse is inconsistent pronunciation of names. Like one actor will pronounce a name one way, and another will pronounce it completely differently. Drives me up the wall.

We have all this computational power and nobody's working on decent sound propagation. I shouldn't be able to hear someone on the other side of a cement wall.

Doesn't look as good in the trailers as photorealistic graphics.

 

[Drathnoxis]

In Shenmue 2 there a bit where you learn about 'Chawan signs,' which involve arranging 4 cups in a specific pattern and then sitting there until someone walks by and sees it. Now this is already a really stupid and obtuse method of communicating anything to anyone, but later on you meet guy who's going to find information for you and he says "when I find something I'll contact you by Chawan sign." What? How do you 'contact' anyone by Chawan sign? It doesn't send out a signal directly to your brain, Ryo needs to be aimlessly walking around and notice you sitting there in front of the cups, and by that point what are the cups even for? Just send him a note or something, this is idiotic!

 

[Dalisclock]

In Shenmue 2 there a bit where you learn about 'Chawan signs,' which involve arranging 4 cups in a specific pattern and then sitting there until someone walks by and sees it. Now this is already a really stupid and obtuse method of communicating anything to anyone, but later on you meet guy who's going to find information for you and he says "when I find something I'll contact you by Chawan sign." What? How do you 'contact' anyone by Chawan sign? It doesn't send out a signal directly to your brain, Ryo needs to be aimlessly walking around and notice you sitting there in front of the cups, and by that point what are the cups even for? Just send him a note or something, this is idiotic!

Isn't this a dead drop with extra step?

 

[Drathnoxis]

Isn't this a dead drop with extra step?

It's more like a gang sign where you need to wait around for hours hoping the other person might show up and see you doing it.

 

[immortalfrieza]

In Shenmue 2 there a bit where you learn about 'Chawan signs,' which involve arranging 4 cups in a specific pattern and then sitting there until someone walks by and sees it. Now this is already a really stupid and obtuse method of communicating anything to anyone, but later on you meet guy who's going to find information for you and he says "when I find something I'll contact you by Chawan sign." What? How do you 'contact' anyone by Chawan sign? It doesn't send out a signal directly to your brain, Ryo needs to be aimlessly walking around and notice you sitting there in front of the cups, and by that point what are the cups even for? Just send him a note or something, this is idiotic!

On that note:

- Anytime in a game where in order to accomplish something or get something you need you have to do a bunch of errands for someone. 99% of the time I've found that the Player Character could probably just punch the guy in the face and take it or climb over the fence to avoid having to get the key to the gate or any number of things aside from "go do what this random person tells you or you can't progress" if only the game allowed for that. These things are just fillers to pad out the time of the game.

- Being forced to play annoying minigames to progress, especially when combined with the last point. I picked up this game to play an RPG, I didn't pick up this game to play whatever thinly veiled version of Bejeweled or Tic Tac Toe or Tetris etc. It's fine when it's a side activity that's completely optional but when I have to play these minigames just to get to the next part of the game it's incredibly irritating.

 

[Meximagician]

- Anytime in a game where in order to accomplish something or get something you need you have to do a bunch of errands for someone. 99% of the time I've found that the Player Character could probably just punch the guy in the face and take it or climb over the fence to avoid having to get the key to the gate or any number of things aside from "go do what this random person tells you or you can't progress" if only the game allowed for that. These things are just fillers to pad out the time of the game.

At one point in Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, to open gate you're expected to:

• talk to a cat lady
• enter a warehouse
• find a lost cat's equally lost squeaky toy
• use the toy to coax the cat into your inventory
• head back to the cat lady
• all while shooting through a bunch of SMG-armed crazies intent on eating said cat

Alternatively:

 

[Bob_McMillan]

In Gotham Knights, when you fall from a great height (which seems very arbitrary lol), your character will break their fall by grappling something above them.

Even when there is clearly nothing above them to grapple. Which happens every single time you use the fast travel system, since it deposits you at the top of buildings. No one on the dev team thought they should maybe tweak that?

Honestly there's a hundred other things I've seen just from watching gameplay that annoy me, but some of those edge towards large and significant.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

In Gotham Knights, when you fall from a great height (which seems very arbitrary lol), your character will break their fall by grappling something above them.

Even when there is clearly nothing above them to grapple. Which happens every single time you use the fast travel system, since it deposits you at the top of buildings. No one on the dev team thought they should maybe tweak that?

Honestly there's a hundred other things I've seen just from watching gameplay that annoy me, but some of those edge towards large and significant.

I haven’t played any of the Spider-Man games either, but it would seem for how well received they are that they don’t do something similar. Even though to me it would seem it’s unavoidable at times with the web slinging, unless there’s always buildings wherever you go.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I haven’t played any of the Spider-Man games either, but it would seem for how well received they are that they don’t do something similar. Even though to me it would seem it’s unavoidable at times with the web slinging, unless there’s always buildings wherever you go.

Taking place in Manhattan tends to help with having tall buildings around to swing off of most of the time, though there's some places, most notably in the middle of parks, where in Insomniac's game at least you get an icon saying there's nothing to swing off of and the swing button is disabled. I think that's true of Spiderman 2 as well, though I'm not sure if it has an icon to show you you're out of swing range.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I haven’t played any of the Spider-Man games either, but it would seem for how well received they are that they don’t do something similar. Even though to me it would seem it’s unavoidable at times with the web slinging, unless there’s always buildings wherever you go.

The bad Spider-man games do this. And the Spider-man in the Avengers game.

To be clear, I'm perfectly fine with the Gotham Knights thing where they don't grapple to an actual in-game object. It's more of that they designed a fast travel system that would make this "shortcoming" a regular sight instead of a rare occurrence.

 

[twistedmic]

The gun color customization on the new Saint’s Row kept resetting to the standard color on my some of my guns.

I liked decking each of my weapons in my choice of Saint colors (Purple, Black and Gold) and found that after nearly every mission or activity my customization was undone.

Silly as it might be, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for that game and I deleted it from my hard drive. I still need to trade it in somewhere, though.

 

[Dalisclock]

The gun color customization on the new Saint’s Row kept resetting to the standard color on my some of my guns.

I liked decking each of my weapons in my choice of Saint colors (Purple, Black and Gold) and found that after nearly every mission or activity my customization was undone.

Silly as it might be, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for that game and I deleted it from my hard drive. I still need to trade it in somewhere, though.

Seriously SR, you had one fucking job.....

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I liked decking each of my weapons in my choice of Saint colors (Purple, Black and Gold) and found that after nearly every mission or activity my customization was undone.

I dunno if I would call that insignificant lol, that sounds a like a huge fucking annoyance. Customization is a huge part of the franchise.

 

[twistedmic]

I dunno if I would call that insignificant lol, that sounds a like a huge fucking annoyance. Customization is a huge part of the franchise.

It was an annoyance to keep loosing my Purple Black and Gold pistol, but the colors didn't change the functionality of the gun itself or alter the gameplay in any way other than cosmetically so I consider it somewhat insignificant.

To tell the truth I was more upset about the continued lack of Forgive and Forget in Saint's Row games. The very idea of an in-universe franchise that wiped your notoriety for a price really fit in with the captialistic/money-driven and morally bankrupt scociety depicted in the games.

 

[laggyteabag]

I don't really get along too well with a lot of goofy customisation options in games. It normally completely wrecks the visual identity of whatever game that I am playing.

I've been playing a lot of Halo Infinite recently, and in Halo's past, the guns looked like guns, and the Spartans looked like Spartans. There was some visual customisation available - particularly when it came to your armour - but this was (for the most part) firmly grounded in Halo's universe, so the game still looked like Halo at the end of the day.

Then in Halo Infinite, where a lot of the customisation is monetized, there is the constant pressure for the developers to constantly one-up themselves with every new store release, to make sure that people come back and buy more, and it all gets increasingly absurd. Cat ears, a neon mohawk, solid gold armour, spawn-in effects that shower you with balloons and confetti. There are also "fracture" armour sets, which are alternate universe designs, so there are a bunch of Samurai and sci-fi World War 1 guys running around. Contrasted against the very serious (and canon) environments, it is all really jarring.

I just feel bad for the artists for these games, especially those responsible for creating a cohesive visual style. All of their hard work is generally immediately undermined by whatever goofy cosmetics are released, and the game will *never* look like how it is supposed to.

 

[PsychedelicDiamond]

The way they pronounce "Doktor" in Metal Gear Rising. They emphasize the wrong syllable. The German word Doktor has the emphasis on the first syllable. And I wouldn't even mind if it wasn't practically the same word as the english word doctor. Which has its emphasis on the first syllable too!

 

[BrawlMan]

Cowabunga Collection not putting Turtles in Time (SNES) for online co-op. I like Hyperstone Heist, but if I have to choose between the two, then the SNES version would be my go to option. Why not both? They're able to put both arcade games and TFS (SNES), so it should not take that much time and effort.

This problem has now been remedied with a patch that came out in later December of 2022.

 

[wings012]

I don't really get along too well with a lot of goofy customisation options in games. It normally completely wrecks the visual identity of whatever game that I am playing.

I've been playing a lot of Halo Infinite recently, and in Halo's past, the guns looked like guns, and the Spartans looked like Spartans. There was some visual customisation available - particularly when it came to your armour - but this was (for the most part) firmly grounded in Halo's universe, so the game still looked like Halo at the end of the day.

Then in Halo Infinite, where a lot of the customisation is monetized, there is the constant pressure for the developers to constantly one-up themselves with every new store release, to make sure that people come back and buy more, and it all gets increasingly absurd. Cat ears, a neon mohawk, solid gold armour, spawn-in effects that shower you with balloons and confetti. There are also "fracture" armour sets, which are alternate universe designs, so there are a bunch of Samurai and sci-fi World War 1 guys running around. Contrasted against the very serious (and canon) environments, it is all really jarring.

I just feel bad for the artists for these games, especially those responsible for creating a cohesive visual style. All of their hard work is generally immediately undermined by whatever goofy cosmetics are released, and the game will *never* look like how it is supposed to.

Some of the MCC cosmetics have really gone off the deep end too. And it seems like Halo isn't the only game doing this, I remember some hubub about Battlefield or CoD getting Santa stuff and players throwing a fit.

I'm kinda okay with Halo being a bit goofy cause the game is somewhat goofy by heart. Grunts were always kinda a bit comedic and silly, marines had rather funny dialogue and we had guys like Sgt. Johnson. Depends how you play it I guess, but I mostly enjoy custom maps and games and silly Forge nonsense. And the whacky cosmetics fit right at home with all the user created content type stuff. The confetti stuff existed back with the the birthday grunt skull in H3 I believe, so eh I don't mind it bleeding a little into multiplayer.

I think my gripes with the skins would be on the MCC side for Halo 3. Some of the assets look obviously too greebly/detailed compared to the original set of Halo 3 skins. Some look like they were backported from Halo 4 as well. Which creates a huge dissonance.

Regardless of what you think of the Infinite Samurai/Dieselpunk stuff I think on some degree it still fits a lot better than what's happened to MCC H3. It at least looks like it belongs in the same game rather than a different one. I also think the samurai stuff is a nice nod and development of the Hayabusa armour.

 

[Absent]

Hitman's barcode tattoo.

So so so stupid. The first time I played Hitman, I actually thought I was supposed to prevent NPCs from seeing the back of my head. Turns out it isn't even necessary. I don't know if that makes the tattoo more or less stupid.