Audio/text logs

Bro you just need to go into the menu, tab across and read the 1847274273 chat logs that are as long as War & Peace to understand the plot then listen to the audiolog longer than Lateralus to get it bro!

If it’s only there for some extra stuff for hardcore marks of the game sure, but when it relies on it heavily as a crux (see MGS V) and you don’t even interact with it naturally it sucks

Neutral endings

Finish a game, ending sucks. Then I go to find out because I didn’t do a certain thing or speak to a certain guy I didn’t unlock the good or bad ending when it’s not made clear.

When it’s games where multiple endings are explicitly expected from the start it’s fine but now when you have no clue about it.

Not a neutral ending but in Red Steel (a game I otherwise loved) if you lost to the final boss, you got the bad ending



And only chance to get another shot at him to get the good ending was to…..replay THE ENTIRE FUCKING GAME.

Amnesia plots

Characters not remembering things and then suddenly remembering when it’s convenient or it’s not explained. To be fair a lot of my favourite Final Fantasies do this but they have otherwise great stories that get them lightly off the hook.

LOW HEALTH NOISE

You’d think they’d learn from crying baby Mario but the beeping noise when you’re at low health in Mario is excruciating to the ears.

The heartbeat noises in Call of duty stress me out too, idk how people find that sound relaxing.


What are yours?

First person shooter mechanics.

I used to love audio (and text) logs - they seemed really cool in Bioshock and I searched everywhere for them. But I just don't care about them anymore.

Someone sits there for hours making up all this lore and typing it into a load of text files most people will never read. How much time (and money) gets wasted on padding games out with all this CONTENT hardly anyone wants?

Multiple endings isn't the push they want it to be. Oh I got the bad ending? Guess I'm Youtubeing it then. What you thought I was gonna redo that slog? Get the f outta here.

Multiple endings are only good for VNs where you have a choice of waifus!

Dec 3, 2022 18:32:30 GMT @aaron said:

Multiple endings are only good for VNs where you have a choice of waifus!

Every Harvest Moon game I'd run with the alcoholic because I like a challenge!

Dec 4, 2022 3:19:43 GMT System said:

Audio/text logs

Bro you just need to go into the menu, tab across and read the 1847274273 chat logs that are as long as War & Peace to understand the plot then listen to the audiolog longer than Lateralus to get it bro!

If it’s only there for some extra stuff for hardcore marks of the game sure, but when it relies on it heavily as a crux (see MGS V) and you don’t even interact with it naturally it sucks

Especially in story-driven games. One exception would be The Last Of Us, where they do a really good job of contextualising the chat logs. You'll stumble across a room and they'll tell you about a secret area. You'll find another chat log along the way that tells you things are getting worse. Then you arrive, you take down some enemy and then the chat log reveals what happens. Then you might get some sort of reward. Stuff like that just makes the game feel more alive.

I don't mind it so much in games like Metroid Prime where you can analyse the environment and it'll help explain what's going on. Either you can ignore it and still enjoy the gameplay, or it's another bonus.

Checkpoint Guards - So the game has a long ass level where it tests the player in every mechanic. You're right near the finish line only to come across not one but two of the toughest enemies that just drained all your resources prior. The solution was to realise the run was lost if you used more than x potions or didn't find an area to grind potions.

The game has a thousand power-ups, only two are useful and you actively have to avoid the rest.

The game has a thousand power-ups, they're all fun to play but 99% of the time it's the same 3 power-ups and the rest are locked behind certain stages.

The game is built around a stagger mechanic that's enjoyable to pull off, bosses don't stagger and it becomes a war of attrition.

The game teaches you early on to avoid certain battles because enemies are too powerful. It only applies to that one instance and everything else is manageable.

Long running series, the game takes out a popular feature only to introduce it in the Season Pass/Re-release.

30 minute boss fight, it all comes down to a QTE you have no idea is coming.

In order to progress the game you have to learn the mechanics of this one mini-game that's had nothing to do with the fight.

99% of the game is frenetic sword fighting - final boss comes down to a mech that can shoot kamehamehas. Or 99% of the game is a Zelda clone, final segment is literally Star Fox 64.

Backseat NPCs - Woah did you know if you tilted the analogue stick forward you can move forward? Movement is the key to life... ... .... ... .... then I had this friend called Gilgamesh who only half tilted the stick forward... ... ... thank you for listening to my Ted Talk on this extremely basic mechanic.

Worse still - Backseat NPCs that spam the same advice over and over or...talk...like...they're...the...game-uh...and you-uh...have to-uh...go to the castle-uh....and then they troll you by making the default option having to listen to it still.

Gimmick Features - Yo, we know 99% of the time you like to play games with standardised controls, but what if we make our wonky gyroid controls mandatory and you have to stand up and complete this section of the fight. Why yes, you've never used this feature until 20 hours in, but we're going to make you do it. Please stand.

Game is built on a beloved franchise - Goku, can you walk my dog and take out the trash? Also if you collect five butterflies you can learn a new Kamehameha!

Game is 99% original music - For the final boss, please welcome to the stage Disturbed! OHH AHH AHH AHH!

Open-World game - If you don't complete this mission 100% the way we want you to, we're making you repeat it from the start!

Obscure sidequests - So wait, you didn't think that walking out on your friends while they were grieving the deaths of an entire village wasn't the right time to travel half-way around the world just to talk to one character half the world away? Sorry, but you can't have the best equipment in the game nor may you get access to all the other post-game concept. Guess you better buy the game.

Physical DLC - You want everything you paid for? Tough luck, now buy an adaptor, our side accessory, 5 toys to life features (all sold out, better pay the scalpers 5 times the price) oh and you better be from Japan otherwise suck it up.

I actually think MGSV does info dumps the best, none of it is particularly critical to the story, you can get most everything important from the cutscenes, just fleshes out the entire complexity and nuance of the happenings. Still, better than all the other MGS games were you had to take whatever CODEC call came in, rather than being able to take everything in at your own leisure.

Death noise is definitely awful, Baby Mario or those damned alarm noises.

Having to walk with a character who moves slower than a full sprint, some games manage to work this by having them match your speed, it's maddening when they don't. Especially on levels where you have to remain within a certain distance of them.

Escort missions, this includes protect the circle and tower defense. I hate having a character at full ass life losing because someone/thing else goes down.

Unpausable/Unskippable cutscenes, not usually as much of a problem these days, but both still happen.

One I'm always very vocal about, over looting the map. I'm an old school collect-a-thon guy, so I'm not against the grind, but some games just don't know when to let up. Breath of the Wild is maybe the worst offender, 900 fucking Korok seeds, and almost half mandatory to max out your inventory. Makes it the least replayable entry in the main franchise for me. More than 100 hours just for Seeds is atrocious.

Boss Rushes

Not bad conceptually but often doesn't make much sense in the story of a game. Why would these four bosses you already defeated suddenly appear just before the final boss? It's often thrown in as a cheap mechanic to enhance the difficulty level and weaken you for the final boss, instead of making the final boss more challenging. It works well as a bonus/post-game mechanic, and it can work if there's a solid story justification for it. Otherwise, no thanks.

To be clear, I'm not describing multi-phase boss battles which I think is an awesome concept.

Ice Levels

More often than not the slippy slidey ice mechanics on platforming games offer a cheap and frustrating challenge instead of something fun.

Sewer Levels

Sewers are dull, they stink, they're not very nice places to be in. For exactly these reasons, sewer levels in video games are not fun. There's no colour, no life, just a dull maze that I want to end as soon as possible. Yet a surprising amount of video games feel compelled to stick in a sewer level.

Not just talking about platformers, even some big RPGs like FF7 and FF8 have sewer levels. The FF8 sewer level is the absolute worst. Every screen looks the same so it's almost impossible to figure out where to go.

Dec 4, 2022 9:12:26 GMT Big Pete said:

99% of the game is frenetic sword fighting - final boss comes down to a mech that can shoot kamehamehas.

Are you talking about Onimusha 2? You just described it perfectly. The final boss battle is fun but it's such a jarring change from the rest of the game. It's a glorified autoscroller where you are some deity that can fire missiles, battling a giant machine that spams all kinds of trippy projectiles.

Good shout about ice mechanics, Dr. Emperor. That's probably my #2 after FPS mechanics.

What bothers you so much about FPS mechanics?

In game collectable for no other purpose to pad out playtime.

Games that lock main story until you do some side quest. Usually sandbox games are guilty of this one

Infinite spawns/grenade spawn something COD use to do may still do when you are trying to be careful on the harder difficulty.

Fall damage and the overhype of challenge/damage it does. it's was such an annoyance with Elden Ring in particular. You are riding a magical horse or face _____ mythical creatures so lets suspend reality there but now we want a form of realism where a minor touch down can result in instant death or what is more damage than a Dragon spitting molten lava out of their mouth.

You either go all the way in with suspending disbelief in a fictional game or you make everything from A to Z realistic. Towing the line is just frustrating. Elden Ring isn't the only game that does this but it was one of the more recent ones that made me frustrated that a seemingly easy touch down actually ends up being a one hit KO. I'm like 95% of the enemies in this game don't even do that type of damage! I'm full of armor and padded like a son of a gun and that still does ridiculous damage.

The N64 Rare games(Conker's Bad Fur Day, Banjo Kazooie & Tooie) were extra bad with this given they were each platforming which is the one genre that should be lenient when it comes to fall damage. Super Mario 64 too, first game in the series where a plumber that jumps super high is now taking damage years and years later from a moderate fall. 

At least they were true to the source material with Mario, some of the deaths you could have in the OG Donkey Kong were criminal.

I don't mind it so much in those games because there's usually tech to reduce or take no damage so it's no big deal. The only problem is that as collect-a-thons, your punishment is spending an unnecessary amount of time climbing back to where you were to repeat the challenge. The Jiggy in Bubblegloop Swamp where you have 8 seconds to walk across this narrow ledge and the camera is on an angle comes straight to mind.

Dec 4, 2022 13:46:24 GMT Emperor said:

Are you talking about Onimusha 2? You just described it perfectly. The final boss battle is fun but it's such a jarring change from the rest of the game. It's a glorified autoscroller where you are some deity that can fire missiles, battling a giant machine that spams all kinds of trippy projectiles.

Not specifically but subconsciously that was probably the biggest offender. It seems really common in a lot of Japanese games and it's usually something you just have to accept and play around.

Going back to endings it depends on how it's done. I hate it in games like Sekiro where you can be locked out of all the best fights if you just play the game normally. Like there was no way of knowing you had to fulfill certain tasks by certain points in the game without it being spoiled or at least accustomed to the franchise and to search tooth and nail for the clues. Whereas a game like King's Quest VI gives you so many different options to beat the game, and you know the more you engage in the world and learn about the characters the better the ending is going to be.

FFX-2 can go jump in a creek. You have to play through the game twice and if you don't idle during one segment to hear a whistle you have to restart. That right there is 100% fair game to YouTube and never look back.

I don't think MMOs are for me either.

'Collect 5 Armor of Alcatraz'

'The monster that has them has a 2% spawn rate and they have a 1% chance of holding them'

'Oh your inventory was full, you couldn't collect the item'

One more for the road.

Games that over-explain simple mechanics but then inundate you with a ridiculous amount of skills/armor/systems that you need to optimise to make the gameplay go smoother.

Also 1000% with you Mike on following NPCs that walk like snails. Symphonia had a segment where you had to lead a gnome through the maze, if you let one enemy respawn or you didn't go through the next screen quick or fast enough it's back to the beginning.

Dec 4, 2022 13:44:56 GMT Emperor said:

What bothers you so much about FPS mechanics?

Lots of good content in here for me to catch up on. Might not be until early half of this week. I'll try to continue some meh content of my own by expounding on this by hopefully Wednesday at the latest.

Audio and text logs is an interesting one. I don't think it's such a bad trope provided that it's just background information and not essential to understand the main story. Fantasy games like The Witcher and Skyrim have tons of extra reading content with books you can pick up and so on. But it's non-essential and just adds to the world building if you choose to read them. Which I don't. But it's cool for those who like to read encyclopedias about their video game universe - I imagine there are some gamers like that.

Dec 4, 2022 18:16:14 GMT @aaron said:

Someone sits there for hours making up all this lore and typing it into a load of text files most people will never read. How much time (and money) gets wasted on padding games out with all this CONTENT hardly anyone wants?

I can understand that people who want to write fantasy fiction and also like video games would love this kinda job. Basically writing Lord of the Rings but with the interactive visual experience to go with it.

Low health noise is probably the most annoying trope. Especially the Legend of Zelda noise. What an earsore. Also kinda insulting to tell the player that they can't monitor their own health bar.

When I worked in a produce department this guy was always telling me the lore of the Souls series. It was utterly fascinating. I dunno where the info comes from, but if it's in useless scrolls I can promise you it wouldn't have been half as interesting reading texts then shooting the shit as we played with cucumbers.

Dec 4, 2022 18:50:30 GMT @ness said:

When I worked in a produce department this guy was always telling me the lore of the Souls series. It was utterly fascinating. I dunno where the info comes from, but if it's in useless scrolls I can promise you it wouldn't have been half as interesting reading texts then shooting the shit as we played with cucumbers.

Souls lore is almost entirely in item descriptions, which some being doled out in dialogue here and there, but mostly item descriptions. 

I never read that shit though, other people lay it out in intricate detail on youtube. Some really great watches. Everytime I finish a souls game I dive into the lore videos to flesh out everything I just experienced.

Dec 4, 2022 18:50:30 GMT @ness said:

When I worked in a produce department this guy was always telling me the lore of the Souls series. It was utterly fascinating. I dunno where the info comes from, but if it's in useless scrolls I can promise you it wouldn't have been half as interesting reading texts then shooting the shit as we played with cucumbers.

Souls lore is all in item descriptions really.

The trope I hate the most is limiting inventory with a stash mechanic also in the game.  Just means you trek back and forth to get all the items and adds annoyance not actual balance.  

Dec 4, 2022 18:50:30 GMT @ness said:

When I worked in a produce department this guy was always telling me the lore of the Souls series. It was utterly fascinating. I dunno where the info comes from, but if it's in useless scrolls I can promise you it wouldn't have been half as interesting reading texts then shooting the shit as we played with cucumbers.

As someone that hates cutscenes I appreciate Dark Souls has hardly cutscenes at all but the story while intriguing is as clear as mud even with the item descriptions and NPC dialogue

There’s videos like this but it’s also just speculation

Dec 5, 2022 15:05:32 GMT System said:

Dec 4, 2022 18:50:30 GMT @ness said:

When I worked in a produce department this guy was always telling me the lore of the Souls series. It was utterly fascinating. I dunno where the info comes from, but if it's in useless scrolls I can promise you it wouldn't have been half as interesting reading texts then shooting the shit as we played with cucumbers.

As someone that hates cutscenes I appreciate Dark Souls has hardly cutscenes at all but the story while intriguing is as clear as mud even with the item descriptions and NPC dialogue

There’s videos like this but it’s also just speculation

Vaatividya is definitely the go to for lore.

Not really a trope but don’t want to make a new thread

When games bend over backwards for streamers, I somewhat understand if it’s a small indie that a streamer gave huge attention to but at times you have full AAA developers bending to the will of streamers not liking a new feature.

So many complaints from streamers about the new CoD being for “dads with their 70’ inch TVs” as if they aren’t a much bigger part of the fan base than the people streaming it.