Biggest nonsense you've ever seen from a game.

[Tale]

Inspired by another forum, let's talk about moments in videogames where horrible design wrecked the gameplay experience. Whether it be enemies that were difficult for ridiculous reasons (not simply by virtue of design to be difficult) or even so much as horrible control schemes.

 

I'll start.

 

Baldur's Gate. The wizard assassin in front of the Friendly Arm Inn. Who will proceed to hit your level 1 or 2 character with Magic Missle almost every single time you play this section, instantly killing your character.

 

The Breath of Fire PSOne control scheme. Moving left and right when all the paths are diagonal.

 

Shao Khan in Mortal Kombat 3 (at least in the SNES version). He will ram you repeatedly with no variation and nothing you can do about it until you fling your controller clear across the room.

Edited March 24, 2008 by Tale

[walkerguy]

AoE II

 

Catapults fire on your own troops.

[Sand]

Eh? Never had a problem with that assassin. He often targets poor Imoen first with me.

Edited March 24, 2008 by Sand

[Tigranes]

The wizard assassin in front of the Friendly Arm Inn. Who will proceed to hit your level 1 or 2 character with Magic Missle almost every single time you play this section, instantly killing your character.

 

Baldur's Gate I, for those who are not familiar.

 

It was quite silly, yes, because even if you prepared Imoen beforehand to backstab and shot arrows at him like crazy, with the THAC0 of a level 1 or2 character it was almost impossible to disrupt that mage before the Mirror Image went off. The only way to get him easily was to lure him to the guards then run away.

 

Catapults fire on your own troops.

 

That was brilliant, otherwise they would have been completely OP. Besides, aimed well, nothing beats a Siege Onager round of flamin' balls on a dense pack of enemy troops, falling over in line.

 

Also, let me be the first to cry WEREWOLF

[mkreku]

The default controls in the first Gothic. You had to focus on an object, hold down the action button and then press a directional button just to pick something up! Incredibly unintuitive and weird. I got used to it after a while, but that nearly killed the game for me. I'm glad it didn't.

[walkerguy]

AoE II: Conquerors fixed that bug.

[walkerguy]

Bauldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (XBOX)

 

For most people this isn't a problem but some of my controls are getting kind of old and the thing where you gently hold the attack button to aim your bow & arrows can be a pain in the ***. I switched attack to the right trigger which fixed that up for me.

[Llyranor]

Alpha Protocol - male protagonist only? What the crap?

[Moatilliatta]

The default controls in the first Gothic. You had to focus on an object, hold down the action button and then press a directional button just to pick something up! Incredibly unintuitive and weird. I got used to it after a while, but that nearly killed the game for me. I'm glad it didn't.

I haven't yet tried 3, but both 1 and 2 have some of the most ****ty control schemes that I have ever tried. I tried to switch between the witcher and gothic 2 and the difference cannot be described in words.

 

@BG assasin gripe

The best method was to use Immy's wand of magic missiles to disrupt his spellcasting, works nearly every time.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Inability to save and reload wherever I wanted seriously reduced my enjoyment of Fable.

 

Not quite in the same league, but I never really liked the control system in Grim Fandango.

[Pop]

I didn't have much trouble with Nimbul the assassin, but I'm the type of BG player who will go to Nashkel to shut my companions up, and then adventure in the outlying areas to the tune of a few levels before hitting the Mines.

 

I always hated the Resident Evil games up to 4 (and most survival horror games, for that matter) because ammo conservation was an unspoken goal, such that if you played without ammo conservation in mind up until the end, you found yourself powerless against the End Boss.

 

I liked PS:T, but I found the party interaction system to be hopelessly convoluted. There's a lot of stuff I just can't seem to be able to figure out.

[Tigranes]

It wasn't Nimbul, Pop - Nimbul was relatively simple. Maybe you just remember the name wrong, but it was that lone mage fellow outside the Friendly Arm stairs who Mirror Images then Magic Missiles.

 

Speaking of PS:T, Baator was pretty horrendously grindy.

[SteveThaiBinh]

Oh, I thought of a really bad one - the levelling system in Oblivion. I never even tried it in the original form, but even improved with mods it was still liable to appalling results. I once left it until level 10 to go to the city to save Martin, and although I just managed to squeeze past the level-appropriate monster hoards, my 'companion' guards were felled in about two hits.

[Meshugger]

Alpha Protocol - male protagonist only? What the crap?

 

Bingo!

 

Joking aside, there are too many instances where it seems like the game-designers let the summer trainees have fun with the design for a while. But the levelling system in Oblivion is the latest candidate for me.

[Pop]

It wasn't Nimbul, Pop - Nimbul was relatively simple. Maybe you just remember the name wrong, but it was that lone mage fellow outside the Friendly Arm stairs who Mirror Images then Magic Missiles.

 

Speaking of PS:T, Baator was pretty horrendously grindy.

Yeah, didn't like Baator at all.

 

As for the assassin guy, there was always a trick involved. Usually I just gave Imoen a bow and had her attack just before he got within speaking distance of the PC. This way the arrow would hit just as he became hostile and starts casting mirror image. Of course, you had to roll the dice on Imoen succeeding, but you have to do that in any case.

[WITHTEETH]

Oh, I thought of a really bad one - the levelling system in Oblivion. I never even tried it in the original form, but even improved with mods it was still liable to appalling results. I once left it until level 10 to go to the city to save Martin, and although I just managed to squeeze past the level-appropriate monster hoards, my 'companion' guards were felled in about two hits.

Seconded!

[Pidesco]

I never had that much trouble with the Friendly Arm Inn assassin. Eeven the first I played it, all took was one or perhaps two reloads. It probably helped that my first character was a ranger with high CON, though.

 

 

Regarding the diagonal movement in BoF, there were a bunch of isometric games in the 80s and early 90s, that did that or at least gave you that control system as an option. Most of these games were not on consoles, though.

[Tigranes]

Pid: I usually play mage or thief - mages are so bad in the first three or four levels of AD&D. I'd leave him way outside, have Imoen talk to him, run around a corner and Hide in Shadows while the Guards dealt with him.

 

But yes, Oblivion was really spectacularly ruined for me when I discovered all the daedric/elven armour worn by bandits and found in barrels. I still finished the game and enjoyed it as a pretty well-made, pretty fun game, but level scaling and the endless, stupid bore of the Gates are unforgettably poor.

[Tale]

I never had that much trouble with the Friendly Arm Inn assassin. Eeven the first I played it, all took was one or perhaps two reloads. It probably helped that my first character was a ranger with high CON, though.

 

 

Regarding the diagonal movement in BoF, there were a bunch of isometric games in the 80s and early 90s, that did that or at least gave you that control system as an option. Most of these games were not on consoles, though.

At least many of those kept your character moving freely and not according to an invisible grid. Or alternately, they had the default left and right movement be at the diagonal.

 

I've seen both, and both of those are far tolerable than defaulting to the straight on a grid with diagonal paths. Don't make me work up a diagram.

Edited March 24, 2008 by Tale

[Dark_Raven]

Friendly Arm Inn assassin just gang up on him quickly and bring him down. I never had any problems with him.

 

The first 30 minutes of PoR 2. It crashed. reload, crashed again, game corrupted. So much hope tossed down the tiolet.

 

Even though I am a power gamer, I found a lot of the hackmaster weapons and other items in BG2 to be over kill. Being able to level up to god levels was a far cry from the first game where you maxed out at level 8-9.

[Azure79]

Heh. I remember that wizard assassin. It was my first time playing BG 1 and my first time experience with any kind of D&D. Up until that point I was just clicking on Xvarts and Gibberlings and my fighter would smack them down while Imoen peppered them with arrows. It was going quite well.

 

It didn't work that way with the wizard. He killed me fairly quickly. I honestly had no idea what he was doing. I finally equipped bows and arrows and shot at him while running away.

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Pretty much the entirity of FF7 is bad game design, there are some nice elements such as the whole materia(I think that's what it's call can't remember) system.

 

The camera in any tomb raider game. It's such a crappy camera!!!

 

Gears of war and it's wall hugging system, if I can notice the amount of time between my interaction with a controller and the response on screen then it's badly implemented, or potentially badly designed... It depends, that "Lag" may be a design desicion.

 

Baldurs Gate 2 : SoA, the first dungeon too long, too dull, and a sticking point for me personally, it just didn't flow nicely, infact I can't even be bother to play BG2 based purely on the fact I hate that dungeon... Also the fact that BG2 is pretty linear, everything just gets crammed into chapter 2, and the rest is very much A - B.

 

Half Life 2, the gravity gun being the main weapon at the end of the game. I really got sick of the Gravity Gun after 10 minutes, the fact a large majority of the gameplay is based around it just irked me.

 

Kotor 1, too much time spent on Taris(did I get that right?), meaning it's a while before you can even get into the whole jedi deal. Kotor 2 addressed this issue.

 

Making worms 3D, bad move period.

 

I could go on...

[Big Bottom]

The wizard assassin in front of the Friendly Arm Inn. Who will proceed to hit your level 1 or 2 character with Magic Missle almost every single time you play this section, instantly killing your character.

 

Baldur's Gate I, for those who are not familiar.

 

It was quite silly, yes, because even if you prepared Imoen beforehand to backstab and shot arrows at him like crazy, with the THAC0 of a level 1 or2 character it was almost impossible to disrupt that mage before the Mirror Image went off. The only way to get him easily was to lure him to the guards then run away.

 

 

I never had that much trouble with the assassin. I mean it took a few attempts but it wasn't anything that made me curse the game.

[Gorth]

@BG1 I thought that was the point of getting Xar and Montaron, cannon fodder

 

I haven't really played BG1 that much, but I waited until a number of guards were concentrated in front of the Inn, then had Montaron lure him within range of the guards, then have the rest of my party gang up on him. The trick is to kill him fast

 

Favourite hate/bad designs:

 

BG2TOB: Peasants and beggars with +3 swords and enough gold to buy a small mansion.

 

KOTOR: Beating the crap out of Malak to the point where he is wallowing around on the floor, trying to stuff his enthrails back in with his amputated hands, just to have that silly girl run to him, lock the doors and then surrender without a fight.

 

NWN2: Forced companions, "Grind" areas.

 

OBLIVION: Everything (maybe not quite fair, I only played it for 8 days)

 

EUROPA UNIVERSALIS III: Cheating AI

 

ALL: Quests that gets stuck in your "to-do" list when they have become unsolvable.

 

Probably a lot more, but those are the ones that is foremost in my mind.

[Tale]

I'm talking about the kind of thing that was just nonsensical. Not just the kind of thing you dislike. Instances where you're near instantly sucker punched with a game over without even a hint that you're doing something "wrong." Or where the game becomes cheap or frustrating to the point where you want to fling a controller.

Edited March 25, 2008 by Tale