An example of bad game design

[Humodour]

I'm playing Mirror's Edge at the moment and at the end of chapter 4 there is a boss that always knocks you over and then throws you off a building. To defeat him you have to 'disarm' him at exactly the right time. You have about a 1 second window of opportunity.

 

There is no alternative. If you cannot do this, you cannot proceed. Worse still, the game reloads BEFORE the unskippable cutscene every time you die, so reloading to try again becomes extremely boring.

 

It seems like such an obvious issue, how were devs stupid enough to let something like that pass?

[Gorgon]

because playtesters aren't asked if a particular sequence just plain sucks. It's not on their to do list.

[Serrano]

Reloads before unskippable cutscenes are a nightmare but disarming in Mirror's Edge isn't as hard as it first looks. The next time you hit a section with armed cops just practice fighting them for a while and I imagine you'll spot the queues quite quickly with repetition. Anyway, here is a vid of that fight, hopefully it will help you with the timing for the boss

[Drowsy Emperor]

I beat him on my first try. The game is quite easy in general and pretty well made.

 

Don't whine, unskippable cutscenes are nothing new in games.

[Gorgon]

Why make a fisticufs game in FPP

[Humanoid]

Guess that's why the local retailer had about a dozen of these for $2 a piece in the bargain bin....

 

 

 

Vaguely topical - I've just quit DXHR over the first boss battle. I'll go find something, anything, else to do.

Edited March 31, 2012 by Humanoid

[Gorgon]

It gets better.

[BobSmith101]

Guess that's why the local retailer had about a dozen of these for $2 a piece in the bargain bin....

 

 

 

Vaguely topical - I've just quit DXHR over the first boss battle. I'll go find something, anything, else to do.

 

First one you can talk your way out of. For the second if you have the typhoon it's not hard at all. It's not that hard without it, plenty of pillars and stuff but typhoon will make it much easier.

[Humanoid]

Yeah I looked up some tips then went back and grenaded him to death - three did it - but it's not so much that but that the design element just turned me off the game regardless. Between that and hacking I realise I have better uses of my time than to sink it into a Jekyll and Hyde sort of a game - I said in some other thread here that I hadn't played a first person shooter in a decade, and this is vindication, just not my thing at all.

[HoonDing]

I didn't have trouble with the Chapter 4 "boss" but stopped playing a couple of chapters later when the ninjas with tazers showed up.

[Humodour]

Deus Ex: HR boss battles were out of place and devalued the game, and honestly so is this boss battle in Mirror's Edge. It's a good game that they sullied by adding it.

 

Thanks Serrano, I'll try again today.

Edited April 1, 2012 by Krezack

[Humanoid]

It does sound like I'm just blaming one thing for ruining the game but that's not my intention - after all I still think of The Witcher 2 as the best game I've played in a long time, despite the silly boss fights. For DX3 it was just the last (and worst) straw in a series of annoyances, after which is becomes too much. The silly energy mechanic, the arbitrary lack of melee, the overused hacking mechanic, the inconsistent awarding of XP, the nonsensical level design in some parts, along with other smaller nitpicks. When combined with my personal aversion to first person shooters, it's just not fun enough for me and continuing on would just lead to more frustrated venting.

 

It just feels like in terms of development, there was a small team that knew what they were doing, and a bunch of other ones that didn't have a clue - and crucially didn't really talk to each other. This after overlooking the story/world issues because the DX universe is not one I particularly care of even know about.

 

---

 

Just to follow up on the minigame issues - but all rights it's probably one of the ones which had a bit more thought put into its design. My problem is not so much with the minigame itself but how as a result, it steals the focus away from the game itself. Designing a "good" minigame is a counterproductive move in general - I'd much rather a terrible minigame that can be ignored or done while completely zoned out than one which is intricate and involved but completely breaks the flow of the game. After all, if minigames weren't meant to be cheap and shallow methods of padding game content, one would just substitute Tetris - the best minigame of all time - into every segment.

 

The problem with that last move of course, is that people would rather then just keep wanting to continue their game of Tetris rather than resuming the inferior main game.

[Fighter]

I said in some other thread here that I hadn't played a first person shooter in a decade, and this is vindication, just not my thing at all.

 

Mirrors Edge & Deus Ex: HR are hardly good examples of good fps mechanics.

[Humanoid]

The only reason I gave it a chance was because they weren't "proper" FPSes. The previous game I was referring to was NOLF2 which had a bit of sneaking and stuff in it too, so it's a consistent comparison for the most part. More purist shooting FPSes I abandoned even earlier - think it was Unreal Tournament most likely, or for something with a story, Jedi Knight. Just totally not my thing - same with RTSes, haven't played any (for more than an hour) since AoE2.

[Fighter]

That makes sense. Cause it's definetely a rpg with mediocre shooting, not a "real" fps.

[Humodour]

My favourite FPS games are mostly RPGs or hybrids:

Half-Life 1

HL 1: Opposing Force

Half-Life 2: Episode 1

Deus Ex 1

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines

System Shock 2

Psychonauts

NOLF 1 (never did play 2... is it worth it? NOLF 1 was amazing)

Giants: Citizen of Kabuto

Portal 1

Portal 2

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

Left 4 Dead

Borderlands

[Gorth]

My favourite FPS games are FPS games... Painkiller, Quake II, Unreal Tournament, Delta Force etc. IMO few games pull off the hybrid part well and most if not all fail in one or more aspect of what they are trying to mix. Action "RPG", Real Time "Strategy", Action "Adventure" and so on are games where either Action or the quoted bit fails to some degree.

[Fighter]

My favourite FPS games are mostly RPGs or hybrids:

 

Half-Life is a hybrid...?

[Oner]

My favourite FPS games are mostly RPGs or hybrids:

 

Half-Life is a hybrid...?

Edited April 1, 2012 by Oner

[HoonDing]

NOLF 1 (never did play 2... is it worth it? NOLF 1 was amazing)

NOLF 2 is amazing.

[Gorgon]

I heard all those amazing acolades and when i fired it up i was almost immediately presented with some sort of abhorrent minigame. Never made it past that.

[Humanoid]

I can't really remember much of it so I'm not much use - I did finish it though, and remember sneaking around a Japanese setting shooting ninjas with a crossbow and a weird sort of chase around an Indian city which were the breaks from the pure shooter bits I guess

[zero_or_more]

I remember playing a game called Psychonauts, but that was a 3rd person 3D platformer - was pretty good though.

[Tale]

NOLF 1 (never did play 2... is it worth it? NOLF 1 was amazing)

NOLF 2 is amazing.

Not a fan. Bought it a few years ago and was presented with terrible stealth elements and infinite spawning enemies.

[HoonDing]

Russia level is crappy, yeah, but after that the game becomes really good.