Tiny, insignificant details in games that really bother you
- Thread starter NerfedFalcon
- Start date
Oh, I left that out on purpose, partially because the amount of stupid in the mission seemed a bit out of scope of the thread, and then because I'd feel compelled to go off on the entire game being stupid. Modern Warfare 2 had a lot of flaws as well but it felt less egregious. MW2 feels like there were explanations for a number of plotholes or questions that were cut from the final game, while MW3 feels like they decided "Spectacle first, figure out a justification later" and built the entire game that way.
But yeah, the New York Harbor Mission was.....really, really awful so for many reasons. The fact there's literally no reason for any of those ships to be packed together that close or that close to shore, the Aircraft Carrier that both on the wrong coast and way too close to shore. Don't get me started on the submarine.
It was pure spectacle that falls apart the moment you think about it in any way.
Last edited:
I'm not talking about the options in the games (I haven't even played the PS4 versions yet), I'm talking about the PS4 accessibility options. You can completely remap the controls of any game on PS4 in the system's settings.
I didn't know you can do that. I thank you for the info, that still doesn't change that Platinum didn't add any customization.
British game companies like Games Workshop have been using the singular "dice" for decades. If a use becomes sufficiently common, it is both standard and no longer misuse - that's just how language works.
I'll acknowledge that much and as schokly as it is, it's good spectacle. It's just hard not to notice that all of the exploding ships are conveniently along your escape path so you can watch all of them explore in a row as you dash between them.
Admittely, Star Wars does the same thing, having huge starships exchanging broadsides at near napoleonic ranges. I think it's because CoD seems to take itself rather seriously that it sticks out.
This is more or less why I stopped playing modern warfare after the second game. I was never that big of a cod fan to begin with, but it lost whole realism argument when you have chase sequences you would see out of a Jason Bourne or James Bond movie.
...Did you read the OP? Because I'm pretty sure I explained what my issue is in the OP.
COD has always lifted stuff from other media. The very first game had very notable references to Enemy at the Gates and Band of Brothers/Saving Private Ryan. However, the MW/BLOPS series went completely over the top. In Modern Warfare 2, The Gulag mission has the Shower Room lifted straight from the Rock and the who invasion of America is basically Red Dawn. But yeah, MW2 was where the series went full in on spectacle.
Accounting for the context of your comment wherein you mention that the OTT-ness starts with those mentioned series, I thought that CoD4:MW was pretty good as it happens. From a story perspective (or whatever passes for 'story' in a Call of Duty game), it was enjoyable and not entirely brainless. Whatever you think of the franchise, Aftermath was quite the contrast.
I'm well aware. I noticed easily back when COD first started.
Hence why I stopped playing and giving a shit. The series lost whatever it could to claim grounded/realistic by that point. The fact you had game critics, hardcore fans (most who do nothing, but play COD), and other publishers aping the series or Gears, while their defenses or claiming it's "realistic". Or wanting to take it in an "realistic" direction. I'm sorry, but when I last checked, reality wasn't made up of two color palettes called dog shit brown or gunmetal grey. This is more so publishers/developers aping Gears in this aspect, but there were times they combined the two. The whole, lets use the two/three weapon limit because either it's "realistic" (when they're just copying COD & Halo) or claiming the casual audience can't handle a weapon wheel. Which is total bullshit. Serious Sam 3, Doom (2016), & the first two Bioshocks proved most gamers can handle multiple weapons fine. What your excuse everyone else? I play games to escape or get away from reality, not embrace "realism".
Last edited:
I think by most metrics Tali's picture in Mass Effect 3 would count as a "tiny, insignificant detail", as it only appears as an interactable in Shepherd's personal quarters after Priority: Rannoch. While it's not hidden, it's a small photo that has no functional impact and is relatively easy to either miss or ignore. But it just pisses me off because it's so half-assed. Everything about it screams that it was a last minute addition that they likely spent only a few minutes on. I'm not even exaggerating. It's a quick and dirty edit of a stock image that does little more than add some lines, white out the eyes, use burn to black out a few fingers and bumping up the color saturation a bit. Even a photoshop amateur like me could likely accomplish it in about 15-30 minutes.
If I were to compare it to something, I'd say it's like a college student remembering that they hadn't started a project that was due the next day, so they desperately slapped together the first thing they could so they'd at least have something to turn in. And it's made all the worse by how this contrasts with the rest of their creature/character design. Sure, you had the Asari filling the "blue skinned space babe" cliché and the Drell not faring much better (and it says something that even both of those compare favorably to this), but you also had the Turians, Salarians, Elcor, Hanar, Rachni, Krogan, the Keepers, Collectors, and Vorcha. This wasn't a franchise where introducing a new alien race that simply looked like a two-tone human would work, because they'd otherwise done a relatively good job at staying away from that lazy approach to design. Heck, the races largely pass the silhouette test!
To bring it back around, to see them go out of their way to show what the Quarians look like under their suits and have that big reveal be "they look like humans with a few tattoos who had a bad accident in shop class" just feels so wrong, and that's made even worse by the revelation of how little effort they actually put into it. If you're just going to half-ass something, don't go out of your way to include it. And if you don't have time to include it, don't half-ass it just to say you put in something that the game would not suffer for lacking.
If I were to compare it to something, I'd say it's like a college student remembering that they hadn't started a project that was due the next day, so they desperately slapped together the first thing they could so they'd at least have something to turn in. And it's made all the worse by how this contrasts with the rest of their creature/character design. Sure, you had the Asari filling the "blue skinned space babe" cliché and the Drell not faring much better (and it says something that even both of those compare favorably to this), but you also had the Turians, Salarians, Elcor, Hanar, Rachni, Krogan, the Keepers, Collectors, and Vorcha. This wasn't a franchise where introducing a new alien race that simply looked like a two-tone human would work, because they'd otherwise done a relatively good job at staying away from that lazy approach to design. Heck, the races largely pass the silhouette test!
To bring it back around, to see them go out of their way to show what the Quarians look like under their suits and have that big reveal be "they look like humans with a few tattoos who had a bad accident in shop class" just feels so wrong, and that's made even worse by the revelation of how little effort they actually put into it. If you're just going to half-ass something, don't go out of your way to include it. And if you don't have time to include it, don't half-ass it just to say you put in something that the game would not suffer for lacking.
Last edited:
Dunno if it's insignificant, but I noped out the the new Final Fantasy Brave Exivus tactical game when, fifteen minutes in, the princess gal lamented about how she couldn't join the prince on the frontlines because she wasn't born a dude.
This is 10 minutes after the first tutorial fight with a spear gal on your team.
This is 10 minutes after the first tutorial fight with a spear gal on your team.
This isn't especially 'insignificant' as it impacts on certain gameplay aspects quite a lot, but how it's actually justified in these three games is generally swept under the rug rather inelegantly with zero in-game hand-waving.
The external details of the player character's ships in Assassin's Creed: III, Black Flag & Rogue are so egregious to any who have any inkling about naval architecture in the Age of Sail, even if it is relatively easy to just outright ignore for most players. I haven't played Rogue, but based on what I know of the Morrigan, it's pretty much just as bad.
So, let's talk about the Jackdaw. Pirate... brig... makes sense, a small and fast ship for outrunning the Spanish & British Navies, so far so good. What's its fully upgraded armament? Forty-six broadside cannons (calibre not specified but probably 12lber, no heavier than 18lber), four bow chasers, two swivel guns, fire barrels... and a mortar. This is fourth-rate ship of the line level of armament stuffed onto a brig (without considering the mortar) and bear in mind that when Thatch nonchalant boasts "48, last I counted" (or words to that effect) regarding the Queen Anne's Revenge's armament, that's barely more on a much larger ship. Brigs boasting twenty twelve-pounders are considered heavily armed. This becomes obvious when you pop onto the dock and look at the Jackdaw's broadside. The lower gundeck is only four or so feet below the main deck. Look, I know ships at this time were cramped, but that's just taking the piss.
Don't get me wrong, I know why they did that and the game was fun, especially the naval combat, but boy does it need a massive suspension of disbelief when it comes to, specifically, the Jackdaw's combat ability.
The external details of the player character's ships in Assassin's Creed: III, Black Flag & Rogue are so egregious to any who have any inkling about naval architecture in the Age of Sail, even if it is relatively easy to just outright ignore for most players. I haven't played Rogue, but based on what I know of the Morrigan, it's pretty much just as bad.
So, let's talk about the Jackdaw. Pirate... brig... makes sense, a small and fast ship for outrunning the Spanish & British Navies, so far so good. What's its fully upgraded armament? Forty-six broadside cannons (calibre not specified but probably 12lber, no heavier than 18lber), four bow chasers, two swivel guns, fire barrels... and a mortar. This is fourth-rate ship of the line level of armament stuffed onto a brig (without considering the mortar) and bear in mind that when Thatch nonchalant boasts "48, last I counted" (or words to that effect) regarding the Queen Anne's Revenge's armament, that's barely more on a much larger ship. Brigs boasting twenty twelve-pounders are considered heavily armed. This becomes obvious when you pop onto the dock and look at the Jackdaw's broadside. The lower gundeck is only four or so feet below the main deck. Look, I know ships at this time were cramped, but that's just taking the piss.
Don't get me wrong, I know why they did that and the game was fun, especially the naval combat, but boy does it need a massive suspension of disbelief when it comes to, specifically, the Jackdaw's combat ability.