Your "What were they thinking." Moment while you were playing a game.

[Dalisclock]

The Duels from Call of Juerez: Bound in Blood.

So, the idea of the duels is a sound one. You meet a notable enemy in a level and duel them one on one. It's a Western, fits the setting.

The problem is that the duels get increasingly difficult the farther along you go and by the end you need to hit some incredibly tight timing to win and there's no way to shortcut this at all. You can't skip them, you can't find ways to make them easier, you just have to git gud.

And what makes it really annoying is that the characters you are controlling are shown to be bad people. Like it's part of the plot how much their morals are degrading the longer they chase the treasure and other people in the story call them out on this, so the fact the game play enforces a fair duel despite these plot developments, and in locations where you and the other guy are probably the only people around for miles gets really hard to swallow so there's no in-universe justification for this at all that I remember.

I guess it's one thing when gameplay and story segregation exist, but quite another when an annoying mechanic is at odds with the story.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Any 3D platformer with a static camera.

 

[Zeraki]

Any 3D platformer with a static camera.

Playing Mario 64 for the first time since the early 2000's when the All-Stars collection came out last year was... an experience.

I remember playing that game so much when I was a kid and I don't know how I was ever ok with that camera.

 

[BrawlMan]

I remember playing that game so much when I was a kid and I don't know how I was ever ok with that camera.

Like everything else, you got used to it and dealt with it. That's how it was back in the day for many games during the 5th and 6th generation.

 

[BrawlMan]

Transformers Devastation RPG and looter elements. They're okay at first, but once you maxed out everything and have your best weapons customized, there is no need to bother with any other weapons. Even when the Auto Bots are at their max level, they still die in 2-3 hits on Magnus and Prime Difficulty. The decision not to sell weapons in bulk should be slapped silly for that idea. What was Platinum thinking? You can only hold 200 weapons total in your inventory, so you might as well make that feature.

 

[Dalisclock]

Playing Mario 64 for the first time since the early 2000's when the All-Stars collection came out last year was... an experience.

I remember playing that game so much when I was a kid and I don't know how I was ever ok with that camera.

So I missed out on the N64 era because I moved out of console gaming after the SNES era and didn't pick it back up until the PS4 era started. So a number of these old games I'm playing for the first time. So for me, Zelda: OOT was good but not AMAZING like everyone insists it was(Basically, it's much like Link to the Past but in 3D and now there's a horse).

I got the Mario 3D All Stars Collection and started with Mario 64 because a quick survey online had people were insisting it's one of the best games. I guess if you played it when it came out, yeah, it was the shit. Playing it now is......awkward. It's not bad but a lot of it hasn't aged very well. Though what makes this interesting is that I played the hell out of Super Mario World when it came out but never played Mario 64 until now, like 25 years later and so I'm going from "Game I loved as a kid and feels like it still holds up" to "Game I didn't play as a kid and feels fine but not amazing".

So I've moved to sunshine and galaxy and I'll try 64 again once I'm done with those and see if it's grown on me at all.

 

[Schadrach]

Seriously Kojima, what the hell, man?

That's a direct quote from my review of Death Stranding. And also likely the first thing Norman Reedus uttered upon seeing the script. Death Stranding is just Maximum Kojima distilled in its purest form.

Though I really think someone just needs to lock Yoko Taro and Kojima in a room together and not let them out until they have a game pitch. The result would either be fantastic or horrible, likely both simultaneously.

 

[Hades]

Fire Emblem Fates.

Every single shota or loli you come across is ''technically an adult'' and you can make babies with all of them. And then there's an hyperbolic time chamber where those babies immediately become teenagers so you can recruit them and take them to war. You can even make a baby with one of those aged up babies if you'd like and then put the baby you get from that into the hyperbolic time chamber.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Fire Emblem Fates.

Every single shota or loli you come across is ''technically an adult'' and you can make babies with all of them. And then there's an hyperbolic time chamber where those babies immediately become teenagers so you can recruit them and take them to war. You can even make a baby with one of those aged up babies if you'd like and then put the baby you get from that into the hyperbolic time chamber.

... uh wut?

Really?

FUCK!

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

So I missed out on the N64 era because I moved out of console gaming after the SNES era and didn't pick it back up until the PS4 era started. So a number of these old games I'm playing for the first time. So for me, Zelda: OOT was good but not AMAZING like everyone insists it was(Basically, it's much like Link to the Past but in 3D and now there's a horse).

I got the Mario 3D All Stars Collection and started with Mario 64 because a quick survey online had people were insisting it's one of the best games. I guess if you played it when it came out, yeah, it was the shit. Playing it now is......awkward. It's not bad but a lot of it hasn't aged very well. Though what makes this interesting is that I played the hell out of Super Mario World when it came out but never played Mario 64 until now, like 25 years later and so I'm going from "Game I loved as a kid and feels like it still holds up" to "Game I didn't play as a kid and feels fine but not amazing".

So I've moved to sunshine and galaxy and I'll try 64 again once I'm done with those and see if it's grown on me at all.

Galaxy is the first Mario game I gave up on, because the constantly rotating perspective of those small tiny “planets” literally gave me headaches each time I tried to play it. I’d take Mario 64’s shit camera any day over that noise. That was over a decade ago, so idk if it would be any different now. Guessing not.

It’s kinda like how when you’re a kid you can spin around like a maniac to be dizzy and lol along with it, but now as an adult, at least for me, that shit hurts my head like a bad hangover.

 

[Dalisclock]

Fire Emblem Fates.

Every single shota or loli you come across is ''technically an adult'' and you can make babies with all of them. And then there's an hyperbolic time chamber where those babies immediately become teenagers so you can recruit them and take them to war. You can even make a baby with one of those aged up babies if you'd like and then put the baby you get from that into the hyperbolic time chamber.

Yeah, I've heard Japanese games tend to have a bad tendency to have characters that look like kids but they handwave it by saying "But she's really an immortal godess or something like that so it's totally okay that she looks like a one take ticket to the pedo wing of a super max prison".

Even Metal Gear pulled that shit a bit by having no less then 3 different adults creeping on Paz, who looks like a 16 year old Costa RIcan high school student, but it's okay, because shes' really a spy pretending to be a 16 year old Costa Rican high school student. Not that anyone knows this until the end of the game though, so it becomes the functional equivalent of "It's okay that she looked young, because she was actually an undercover cop!"

 

[Hades]

Yeah, I've heard Japanese games tend to have a bad tendency to have characters that look like kids but they handwave it by saying "But she's really an immortal godess or something like that so it's totally okay that she looks like a one take ticket to the pedo wing of a super max prison".

Fates doesn't even goes for that handwave. Its not like Nowi from the previous game who was a dragon and thus centuries old despite looking like a 10 year old. Instead we got Percy the kid sidekick who insist he's just ''small boned'', Elise the 10 year old little sister who just has her brother tell her(or rather the audience) that she's technically an adult, Hayato the child mage who insists he's not a child and leaves it at that, and mighty Midori who in some supports claims she's an adult but that others just don't believe her, while in others addressing herself as a child. I guess there's one witch who got cursed for her misdeeds by being turned into a kid for all her life.

Most of those lines about being ''small boned'' or ''technically an adult'' seem to be the localisation team freaking out and trying to salvage things as best they can. I have a very strong feeling that in the Japanese version many of the children who insists they aren't children really are just children who never deny that fact even as you pair them up and make kids with them. Things like ''skinship''(and ''skinship with your real little sister'') being removed in the west as well as an interview mentioning a ''team A'' of regular devs and a ''team B'' of otakus they had to reign in from being too weird suggest that there was a constant struggle between those that wanted to put in all sort of weird otaku tropes that the west would never understand, and those that desperately wanted to tone those things down.

Fates was a rather....''unique'' Fire Emblem game.

 

[Dalisclock]

Fates doesn't even goes for that handwave. Its not like Nowi from the previous game who was a dragon and thus centuries old despite looking like a 10 year old. Instead we got Percy the kid sidekick who insist he's just ''small boned'', Elise the 10 year old little sister who just has her brother tell her(or rather the audience) that she's technically an adult, Hayato the child mage who insists he's not a child and leaves it at that, and mighty Midori who in some supports claims she's an adult but that others just don't believe her, while in others addressing herself as a child. I guess there's one witch who got cursed for her misdeeds by being turned into a kid for all her life.

Most of those lines about being ''small boned'' or ''technically an adult'' seem to be the localisation team freaking out and trying to salvage things as best they can. I have a very strong feeling that in the Japanese version many of the children who insists they aren't children really are just children who never deny that fact even as you pair them up and make kids with them. Things like ''skinship''(and ''skinship with your real little sister'') being removed in the west as well as an interview mentioning a ''team A'' of regular devs and a ''team B'' of otakus they had to reign in from being too weird suggest that there was a constant struggle between those that wanted to put in all sort of weird otaku tropes that the west would never understand, and those that desperately wanted to tone those things down.

Fates was a rather....''unique'' Fire Emblem game.

I mean...Yikes.

I think I understand the joke in this. Not the same series but apparently there's a fair bit of shipping invovled nonetheless.


"You can't prosecute them for War Crimes when they're too busy committing HORNY CRIMES!"

 

[Burnhardt]

Red Dead Redemption 2 - The crafting. You. Have. To. Do. Every. Single. Item. And. Chose. To. Store. It. One. At. A. Time.

Black Mesa - The duck-jumping. It is absolutely everywhere, and I'm convinced there is far more of it than there is in the original Half-Life and Half-Life 2 combined.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Red Dead Redemption 2 - The crafting. You. Have. To. Do. Every. Single. Item. And. Chose. To. Store. It. One. At. A. Time.

I always wondered why they couldn’t have just had a crafting option for when you’re resting or camping at least, to do max amounts of whatever you choose and fade the screen to advance time or something. Same with weapon maintenance. Um, there’s a bit more to gun care than wiping the outside of it with a cloth. It would’ve added more strategy if you needed some tools like at camp to do a full clean, or out in the field doing a quick and dirty clean to correct jamming or something. Do guns even jam if they’re completely dirty? I’ve never let them get that bad so idk.

 

[Drathnoxis]

DK64, why did they require you to beat the DK arcade game with a single life, twice? This is such a huge increase in difficulty from anything else in the game. It should have been fun optional content, but no, you need to do it to be able to access the final boss.

Also Beaver Bother. Why is there an invisible wall around the hole?! JUST GO IN! GO IIIIIIINNNNNN!!!

And why are there so freaking many coins in the game when there's nothing to use them for. I'm going to quote a wiki right here:

There are 949 Banana Coins currently in Donkey Kong 64. Here is how it is broken down:

Donkey: 174, Diddy: 178, Lanky: 185, Tiny: 193, Chunky: 219

Each Kong spends a total of 21 coins on their own upgrades, Donkey Kong spends an extra 2 coins when he plays the DK arcade game, and a total of 53 coins on all shared upgrades.

Donkey Kong 64

donkeykong.neoseeker.com

You spend 160. Out of 949! There are 789 extra coins in the game!! Whyyyyyy?!

 

[Dalisclock]

I always wondered why they couldn’t have just had a crafting option for when you’re resting or camping at least, to do max amounts of whatever you choose and fade the screen to advance time or something. Same with weapon maintenance. Um, there’s a bit more to gun care than wiping the outside of it with a cloth. It would’ve added more strategy if you needed some tools like at camp to do a full clean, or out in the field doing a quick and dirty clean to correct jamming or something. Do guns even jam if they’re completely dirty? I’ve never let them get that bad so idk.

Yeah, the gun cleaning thing feels really perfunctory and useless. The parts that need cleaning are usually on the inside of the gun and as far as I know it doesn't cause a jam anyway. It just gives some extra damage, but a headshot is a headshot no matter what.

And I gave up trying to craft the bullets when I realize you need to do it one by one and just spent some money on buying express or HV, which doesn't cost much at all.

 

[Silvanus]

Fucking Moldorm in ALttP.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Still waiting on that Spider-Gwen game. Then they do Spider-Verse and after that, they can do whatever the hell they want for all I care. It most likely won't turn out that way of course.

Holy shit spider gwen would be amazing!!!

On topic: almost every major story beat in The Last of Us 2. Every single sequence in that game is literally there because the writers need the characters to be stupid for the plot to happen. The only believable moment is the snow fight with the kids.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Fire Emblem Fates.

Every single shota or loli you come across is ''technically an adult'' and you can make babies with all of them. And then there's an hyperbolic time chamber where those babies immediately become teenagers so you can recruit them and take them to war. You can even make a baby with one of those aged up babies if you'd like and then put the baby you get from that into the hyperbolic time chamber.

Honestly? This sounds so twisted I end up feeling intrigued. Like a B movie so bad it ends up being hilarious.

I mean...Yikes.

I think I understand the joke in this. Not the same series but apparently there's a fair bit of shipping invovled nonetheless.


"You can't prosecute them for War Crimes when they're too busy committing HORNY CRIMES!"

Speaking of Trails of Cold Steel, if you're going to make a relationship mechanic and several games with the same characters, ACTUALLY MAKE IT MATTER!!! To put it without spoilers it's obvious from the word jump that they wanted the Main Character to get with this particular girl in the party, which is why they spend the games pining for each other and having significantly more involved scenes together while the relationships the MC has with any of the other girls are consistently ignored and you really have to go out of your way to see anything of note with any of them. Either give everyone the possibility for equal time or just throw out the relationship mechanic completely.