Biggest nonsense you've ever seen from a game.

[taks]

-Any game that doesn't allow you to save, relying on checkpoints, features a difficult section that after losing forces you to go through a long unskipable cutscene over and over again every time you die like gamer purgatory.

hehe, interestingly enough, legos star wars: complete saga (PS3) has several sections like that. my son and i must have done the pod-race a dozen times before we realized that we had to win the race else it would start over. i ended up having to drop my son out (he's not even 5 yet) so i could get through it by myself. the same problem when running through the building that was blowing up around you (right before annakin becomes darth vader). the last jump has you jumping into a section that you cannot see, yet you are expected to land on safe ground before getting through the next section (with a cut-scene). often, even though seemingly landing on a good place, it would simply restart you. both john and i were screaming at the tv.

 

i should add, the camera angles in this game are horrendous, often obscuring important details.

 

taks

[tripleRRR]

The stupid forest maze thing in IWD2. First time I played through the game I had no one with the forestry skill or whatever it's called. Eventually I gave up my pride and looked the solution up on gamefaqs.

[Tigranes]

Ohh, yeah. I just use area codes to cheat around. It was a pretty good concept, but, well, IE mazes are just bad.

[Pop]

I remember there being little hints, like treant activity coming from certain exits, but it wasn't nearly as easy when not using a Wilderness Lore character, obviously.

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Urgh, that was certainly a extremely unfun experience, it just wasn't challenging and more or less it was purely frustrating and unfulfilling. Infact it's more unfun than that damnable first dungeon in BG 2!

[WITHTEETH]

Bioshock mouse control when in menu and hacking. Its horrible for PC. I can't seem to find a real fix anywhere.

[Arkan]

Bioshock mouse control when in menu and hacking. Its horrible for PC. I can't seem to find a real fix anywhere.

What's wrong with it? I never noticed anything that wasn't "standard" for using mouse.

 

For me it was RE4. Whenever they had those situations where you have to push those buttons in sequence. I hated that and it ripped me out of the experience and damn near ruined it for me. Horrible.

[samm]

Hehe, I feel so l337 now that I see how many people had problems with that section in IWD2. Always got it fast enough, if not with wilderness lore and ingame hints then with map pins

[Musopticon?]

Yeah, I did it with map pins and Wilderness Lore the first time. Nowadays it goes by memory once I reach the dryad.

[walkerguy]

Star wars battlefront one glitch, happens here and there (xbox only perhaps?)

 

you get out of a tank, plane, turret, whatever and your body is stuck in the falling postition, arms bent and legs bent, bracing to land on the ground only you dont, you float. your glitched character then floats around and can still shoot and toss greneades with reduced visablitiy because his arms are in the way. If you jump or roll or get into another tank, etc the glitch will stop. Its funny and doesnt really piss me off or anything.

 

Also has happens a lot on the yavin 4 temple level

[random n00b]

The IE combat scripting that governed the AI was abused badly by gameplay programmers in some instances of BGII/ToB, especially in the latter parts. It was common for AI casters to repeatedly activate contingencies/chain contingencies/spell triggers that contained illegal amounts of illegal spells. Often they would trigger even when timestopped! Not to mention the spell/innate ability machineguns that some NPCs were (read: Draconis). Abuse, cheese, engine/ruleset shortcomings and overall imbalance made the final battles a mess...

 

But the worst design decision ever was probably when LA decided to strip the superb iMuse music system from TIE Fighter Collector's ED in favor of static digital audio tracks. Yep, that made me cry.

[Wistrik]

In no order other than how they pop into memory...

 

NWN2'2 forced companions, and resulting contrived/fabricated conversations. I love the campaign but the party system makes me want to kill someone. (MotB is a vast improvement in almost all respects. I love that campaign.)

 

AOE II's Trebuchet bug: unpacked trebs counted as nothing in the engine so the AI would happily build more packed trebs. Lost count of the number of times I got waylaid by 8+ trebs on a map that supposedly allowed 2.

 

NWN's multiplayer-supporting OC that left my singleplayer game feeling like a massive Fedex campaign (in multiplayer you'd get two or three buddies to grab the other items so you'd only need to go to one location).

 

BG2's mage battles that always ended up with mage vs. mage while the other classes stood around waiting for counterspell. It's nice being able to topple mages easily in MotB, despite the power they can throw around.

 

Any FPS game with time limits, especially on maps that happen to be tilted 45 or more degrees and I have to fight gravity and the camera, as well as the clock. Ugh.

 

Bard's Tale: Thief of Fate: great game but getting a fresh group to level 3 or 4 was a hair-pulling exercise. Step step step... You are ambushed by 8 level 4 hobgoblins... death... reload. And that was just the city streets.

 

Ultima V's underworld critters: first time in an Ultima game that I couldn't kill everything (except the King) without dying once I reached level 8 (the limit). It was quite a change back then.

 

Ultima VIII, the arcade game. Thankfully I didn't get around to playing it until after Origin disabled the moving platforms and a few other annoyances, but there's still enough bugs to bring me to tears while trying to play.

 

Dreamfall's camera control was unlike anything I'd ever encountered, but once I got used to it I liked it quite a bit.

 

The Longest Journey doesn't support current versions of DirectX so I can't for example enable FSAA to make it look better at it's unchanging 640x480 resolution. FSAA breaks certain necessary interface functions. The developers know what the problem is but won't take the time & money to address it. Thankfully Syberia is slightly newer and doesn't suffer this limitation. It's stuck in 800x600 but I can max out quality settings (with nhancer) and make it look very nice.

 

 

Those are the ones I can remember. Most games I've played have been decent, and thanks to game reviewers and developer forums I've managed to avoid the lemons.

 

As to BG1's Friendly Arms ambush: yeah it got me the first time, but after that I got smart. Wand of Magic Missiles and guards are your friends in that encounter. He drops quick every time I play now.

[Stephen Amber]

Hmmm maybe the circular dialogue of Icewind Dale 2 that you couldn't escape from. There was a certain dialogue branch, I think it was in the Chult yuan-ti area, that if you selected it it eventually went back to the start of the branch and there was no escape from it other than a re-load... I'd call that shoddy playtesting.

[Enoch]

BG2's mage battles that always ended up with mage vs. mage while the other classes stood around waiting for counterspell. It's nice being able to topple mages easily in MotB, despite the power they can throw around.

I haven't played BG2 in forever, but as I recall, my mage battles were always won by 1 overpowered spell-- the 5th level druid spell Insect Plague (or something like that). It was area-effect (so it could hit the invisible), and it affected enemies only, but it was targetable on your own characters. Its effects (1 dam/round, 100% spell failure, chance of "Fear" effect) were also considered physical, so magic resistance did the enemy no good, and the duration was long enough that your fighters could bash through their stoneskins, mirror images, mantles, etc., before it wore off. Simply target the spell on one of your charging fighters, tell them to wail on the enemy, and wait until he goes down. That and an occasional "True Sight" from Keldorn were really all you needed.

[Cantousent]

BG2's mage battles that always ended up with mage vs. mage while the other classes stood around waiting for counterspell. It's nice being able to topple mages easily in MotB, despite the power they can throw around.

I haven't played BG2 in forever, but as I recall, my mage battles were always won by 1 overpowered spell-- the 5th level druid spell Insect Plague (or something like that). It was area-effect (so it could hit the invisible), and it affected enemies only, but it was targetable on your own characters. Its effects (1 dam/round, 100% spell failure, chance of "Fear" effect) were also considered physical, so magic resistance did the enemy no good, and the duration was long enough that your fighters could bash through their stoneskins, mirror images, mantles, etc., before it wore off. Simply target the spell on one of your charging fighters, tell them to wail on the enemy, and wait until he goes down. That and an occasional "True Sight" from Keldorn were really all you needed.

 

In that case, much like Vampiric Feast, I have to question a design decision where one spell has that much power. Any spell that counts as a win button in what is meant to be a tough fight is flawed.

 

Worst design decisions? Troika. 101 ways to kill your otherwise fun game by stupid and arrogant design decisions. (If you claim that something that appears to be a bug is a design decision, I think you should probably be judged twice as harsh. Identify in ToEE)

[Zoma]

Final Fantasy series male protagonists turning more and more like a girl, feminine, sissy.

 

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE HUNKS AND ALL THE HANDSOME MEN!? NOT PRETTY BOYS PLS PLS PLS!!

[alanschu]

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.

 

 

I always end up sneaking my way around Baator with Annah to avoid it because of that!

[Pop]

Insect plague was affected by magic resistance, it only worked against dragons if you hit them with lower resistance / pierce magic at the beginning of the battle, and they didn't work at all against constructs. Not that it really mattered. All fights with mages were basically over once you got a successful breach spell off.

 

What did work the way Enoch describes, interestingly enough, were the monk abilities. Going around Suldenesslar (sp?) and using quivering palm on iron golems was always fun.

Edited April 4, 2008 by Pop

[Morgoth]

Not exactly bad design, but rather an annoying bug I had in Hellgate London while wrapping up Act 4. So I stepped through a portal to meet two brothers in a monastery to talk to them. After I was done, I wanted to get back to my former place, so went through the portal again, then there was a hiccup, and I was just again in the monastery. I tried it again and again, but I couldn't get out of this loop, and I couldn't use a teleporter either. The trick was to approach the portal by a 90

[alanschu]

I was never bothered by the flashlight in Doom 3... Though I reckon I am one of few.

 

Me neither.

[alanschu]

Civ2 spearmen beat tanks. Classic.

 

I had a militia beat my battleship in the original!!!

[alanschu]

Unkillable characters. To name a few games that have this; both Kotors, Bloodlines (werewolf ) and probably many more. Regarding Kotor what better way to earn darkside points that go around and kill civilians. To combat that the developers could spawn, in that area, uber powerful police, guards after you. The unkillable werewolf in Bloodlines was stupid. You can kill the Sheriff, Ming Zao and other far more powerful enemies but not a werewolf?

 

 

You can kill the Werewolf. Just not in a fair fight, which is how it's supposed to be in the first place.

 

 

Ah yes, I remember when you came in and enlightened us all about how the Werewolf fight was pretty spot on for the universe. Ahhhhh...memories!

[Llyranor]

If Hades were a spearperson, he'd want to be able to beat up tanks too!

[Enoch]

Insect plague was affected by magic resistance, it only worked against dragons if you hit them with lower resistance / pierce magic at the beginning of the battle, and they didn't work at all against constructs. Not that it really mattered. All fights with mages were basically over once you got a successful breach spell off.

 

What did work the way Enoch describes, interestingly enough, were the monk abilities. Going around Suldenesslar (sp?) and using quivering palm on iron golems was always fun.

As I said, it's been a while. I don't doubt that you're correct on MR and Insect Plague. But I was talking about one-high-level-enemy-mage battles (who seldom had significant MR), not dragon or golem battles. I never really had the patience to go through the combat log and remember which anti-magic spells countered which defenses-- I just Plagued 'em and hammered 'em into the dirt. One of my attacks (like, say, the various elemental bonuses from the Flail of Ages) usually got through.

 

Civ2 spearmen beat tanks. Classic.

 

I had a militia beat my battleship in the original!!!

Haha! The perils of defensive bonuses and win-or-die single-calculation combat!

 

It's fun to laugh at (and frustrating to see happen), but there is a serious scaling issue on how to balance each incremental step in the technological development in the game. Sure, Tanks should always beat stone age militias, but should Medieval knights? Should those knights, in turn, always lose to 19th Century rifle infantry? If you make the advantages of getting that next tech around the bend too high, you skew the balance between boosting research and boosting military, and the winner is always the player who stays "clean" enough to pursue his/her peaceful research until he/she can be the first to build a modern military. (In which case you might as well start the game in 1900AD instead of 4000 BC.)

[random n00b]

Insect plague was affected by magic resistance, it only worked against dragons if you hit them with lower resistance / pierce magic at the beginning of the battle, and they didn't work at all against constructs. Not that it really mattered. All fights with mages were basically over once you got a successful breach spell off.

 

What did work the way Enoch describes, interestingly enough, were the monk abilities. Going around Suldenesslar (sp?) and using quivering palm on iron golems was always fun.

As I said, it's been a while. I don't doubt that you're correct on MR and Insect Plague. But I was talking about one-high-level-enemy-mage battles (who seldom had significant MR), not dragon or golem battles. I never really had the patience to go through the combat log and remember which anti-magic spells countered which defenses-- I just Plagued 'em and hammered 'em into the dirt. One of my attacks (like, say, the various elemental bonuses from the Flail of Ages) usually got through.

Save for, obviously, mobs that are immune to spellcasting interruptions. Lovely. I'll have to try that one on Kangaxx.

 

 

It's fun to laugh at (and frustrating to see happen), but there is a serious scaling issue on how to balance each incremental step in the technological development in the game. Sure, Tanks should always beat stone age militias, but should Medieval knights? Should those knights, in turn, always lose to 19th Century rifle infantry? If you make the advantages of getting that next tech around the bend too high, you skew the balance between boosting research and boosting military, and the winner is always the player who stays "clean" enough to pursue his/her peaceful research until he/she can be the first to build a modern military. (In which case you might as well start the game in 1900AD instead of 4000 BC.)

That could be circumvented by applying a blanket era-effectiveness flag. Modern Age units should be able to stomp Stone Age units, period. And as far as the importance of research goes... it's not the modern military that will kick your opponent's rears. It's the huge boost in production that modern city improvements bring. As it should, I think. Definitely, Civ isn't one game to be looking up to as far as balancing goes. Or perhaps I just suck.