Ok so here's something that really bothers me. From time to time a good game will come out, and you'll think, "This game would be so much better if the developers _____." Now, I can kind of understand if ____ refers to something like "put in coop" where it would've taken months to years of programming, but when that ____ refers to something that the developers could have EASILY done, it aggravates me to no end. Two prime recent examples of this are Brutal Legend and Assassin's Creed II.
Let's look first at Brutal Legend as it's the larger offender. The main problem with it is that once you beat it, there's really nothing to DO. However there's so much possible "could be" that it annoys me. As you drive around and free bound serpents and such Eddie grows stronger and unlocks new abilities to use in stage battles. But once you beat the game stage battles cease to exist, so you have no motivation or reward for hunting them all down, and starting a new game loses you not only that, but all your axes, guitars, and car upgrades. There are two possible solutions to this. First of all, a new game +, which would have probably taken one programmer like, an hour to include in the game. Second, something as simple as a stage battle simulator type thing that you can go to in the campaign and just battle AIs (they already allow you to do stage battles against the AI in a different mode but they take away all your shit, so this probably wouldn't have taken much effort either.)
Now the second problem with brutal legend (which would have been fixed to some degree with the stage battle thing) is that those cool "team attacks" Eddie does with the AIs cease to exist after you beat the game as well. The reason this bothers me is because most of them allow you to ride some sort of cool looking fast transportation. There's even one point early on in the game where eddie drives one of the bassist's awesome motercycle-coffin things, but you never get to do that again. There are a few members of your cavalry that travel around the countryside, but not all of them, and some of them you can't even team up with in the outside world. Also, the animals from the "call of the wild" solo are replaced forever by the "upgraded" one, so you end up giving up nimble panthers with Laser eyes for a big slow moving mammoth thing. The simple solution to this would to allow you to select the animal you want the solo to call from the pause menu or something, and to give you the ability to call one group of soldiers at a time to any location.
Assassin's Creed II holds similar problems, two of which are things they took out from the first one. First of all, once you beat the game you can't replay missions. Meaning if you ever want to
again you have to start all over from the very beginning of the game. It's not even like you can create save files before the missions you like because the damn thing autosaves whenever you as much as sneeze. Second, where the first one allowed you to kill civilians after you beat the game, the second one doesn't. It's not even like the first one where you kill a civilian and you lose one bar of health, I could deal with that, but rather every time you kill 3 civilians it automatically desynchronizes you. It takes a lot of the fun out of being an almost otherworldly badass assassin with cool weapons if you can't use them freely. Especially when those minstrels are designed so that your first reaction is to club them to death.
And while we're on the subject of weapons, I'll bet it took a lot of time to program those Axes, Claymores, and Lances. So why the fuck don't they let the player buy them? I mean, yeah I guess they're a bit overpowered, but after I've beaten the game I already have the weapon with the stat points full on everything, which swings much faster than a Lance would anyways. And more importantly if I cared I could just NOT use them. Similarly, you only use Da Vinci's flying machine in ONE mission. (two if you count the one where all you do is get in it and crash it into a bridge.) Would it really have been that difficult to put them up on the lookout points so the player could use them to glide around from time to time? It just doesn't make sense to me that all these fun things that are IN the game aren't used to the fullest. /rant
So for the sake of discussion, what games do you think should have used more of what they already had?
Let's look first at Brutal Legend as it's the larger offender. The main problem with it is that once you beat it, there's really nothing to DO. However there's so much possible "could be" that it annoys me. As you drive around and free bound serpents and such Eddie grows stronger and unlocks new abilities to use in stage battles. But once you beat the game stage battles cease to exist, so you have no motivation or reward for hunting them all down, and starting a new game loses you not only that, but all your axes, guitars, and car upgrades. There are two possible solutions to this. First of all, a new game +, which would have probably taken one programmer like, an hour to include in the game. Second, something as simple as a stage battle simulator type thing that you can go to in the campaign and just battle AIs (they already allow you to do stage battles against the AI in a different mode but they take away all your shit, so this probably wouldn't have taken much effort either.)
Now the second problem with brutal legend (which would have been fixed to some degree with the stage battle thing) is that those cool "team attacks" Eddie does with the AIs cease to exist after you beat the game as well. The reason this bothers me is because most of them allow you to ride some sort of cool looking fast transportation. There's even one point early on in the game where eddie drives one of the bassist's awesome motercycle-coffin things, but you never get to do that again. There are a few members of your cavalry that travel around the countryside, but not all of them, and some of them you can't even team up with in the outside world. Also, the animals from the "call of the wild" solo are replaced forever by the "upgraded" one, so you end up giving up nimble panthers with Laser eyes for a big slow moving mammoth thing. The simple solution to this would to allow you to select the animal you want the solo to call from the pause menu or something, and to give you the ability to call one group of soldiers at a time to any location.
Assassin's Creed II holds similar problems, two of which are things they took out from the first one. First of all, once you beat the game you can't replay missions. Meaning if you ever want to
Strangle the pope to death
And while we're on the subject of weapons, I'll bet it took a lot of time to program those Axes, Claymores, and Lances. So why the fuck don't they let the player buy them? I mean, yeah I guess they're a bit overpowered, but after I've beaten the game I already have the weapon with the stat points full on everything, which swings much faster than a Lance would anyways. And more importantly if I cared I could just NOT use them. Similarly, you only use Da Vinci's flying machine in ONE mission. (two if you count the one where all you do is get in it and crash it into a bridge.) Would it really have been that difficult to put them up on the lookout points so the player could use them to glide around from time to time? It just doesn't make sense to me that all these fun things that are IN the game aren't used to the fullest. /rant
So for the sake of discussion, what games do you think should have used more of what they already had?
