Biggest bullshit in a video game

[sasazuka]

I'm playing Need for Speed: Shift, which I think is an underrated racing game overall (and essentially a precursor to Project CARS from the same studio, Slightly Mad) and I have the Ferrari DLC, which is pretty cool but I don't like how you can't buy upgrades for the Ferraris, probably for licensing reasons (I guess because Ferrari wants you to believe that Ferraris are perfect right out of the factory? I'm glad more recent racing games let you upgrade Ferraris), and I also don't like how you can't even choose between factory colours for Ferrari. You're just stuck with red even though AI opponents who drive Ferraris are allowed to have them in other factory colours.

While I do appreciate the colour wheel feature for creating your own custom colours for the other cars in the game that aren't Ferraris, there's only one default factory colour; this is a game that came out in 2009, a couple of years after Forza Motorsports 2, so they could have at least included all factory colours as selectable options instead of trying to recreate them with the colour wheel.

 

[Fuck Y'all]

I'm playing Need for Speed: Shift, which I think is an underrated racing game overall (and essentially a precursor to Project CARS from the same studio, Slightly Mad) and I have the Ferrari DLC, which is pretty cool but I don't like how you can't buy upgrades for the Ferraris, probably for licensing reasons (I guess because Ferrari wants you to believe that Ferraris are perfect right out of the factory? I'm glad more recent racing games let you upgrade Ferraris), and I also don't like how you can't even choose between factory colours for Ferrari. You're just stuck with red even though AI opponents who drive Ferraris are allowed to have them in other factory colours.

While I do appreciate the colour wheel feature for creating your own custom colours for the other cars in the game that aren't Ferraris, there's only one default factory colour; this is a game that came out in 2009, a couple of years after Forza Motorsports 2, so they could have at least included all factory colours as selectable options instead of trying to recreate them with the colour wheel.

here you have raycevick vid about Ferrari in racing games:

 

[BooneHelm]

Games with weird difficulty settings. When I'm playing a game on Normal difficulty and I'm just walking through enemies and bosses, I will naturally turn up the difficulty to Hard if given the option. Most games generally do this pretty well as the game is obviously a step above in terms of difficulty.

However there are a few games where the difficulty just goes through the roof and everything stomps your ass into oblivion. So you're left with either something way too easy or something way too hard.

 

[FuckedUp]

Games with weird difficulty settings. When I'm playing a game on Normal difficulty and I'm just walking through enemies and bosses, I will naturally turn up the difficulty to Hard if given the option. Most games generally do this pretty well as the game is obviously a step above in terms of difficulty.

However there are a few games where the difficulty just goes through the roof and everything stomps your ass into oblivion. So you're left with either something way too easy or something way too hard.

Not sure if I already posted this, but difficulty settings in general. You're not really playing the game unless you're playing on the hardest difficulty, with only a handful of exceptions (like Nightmare in OG DOOM).

 

[Reverend]

When cars drive like refrigerator's on wheels and handle as well as a hippo stampeding. Any GTA game, which used to be the hall mark for driving games, is awful at this. Hell even the Mako from ME handled better than some of the cars in those games.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

Not sure if I already posted this, but difficulty settings in general. You're not really playing the game unless you're playing on the hardest difficulty, with only a handful of exceptions (like Nightmare in OG DOOM).

Increased health or damage isn't true difficulty, it's laziness and shit game design.

 

[Balr0g]

Increased health or damage isn't true difficulty, it's laziness and shit game design.

I remember the really old Mickey Mouse game on my Master System 2 called Castle of Ilusion. When you select the easy difficulty the game is barely 10 minutes long. When you finish you basically get the message "now use the higher difficulty to play the real game loser!" That was also the same for the Mega Drive version

 

[FuckedUp]

Increased health or damage isn't true difficulty, it's laziness and shit game design.

So you're saying it's "fake difficulty" and "shit game design" for a character to only be able to take 5 hits instead of 1000?

 

[SIGSEGV]

So you're saying it's "fake difficulty" and "shit game design" for a character to only be able to take 5 hits instead of 1000?

If normal mode is difficult enough for players to actually need to be capable of surviving 1000 hits, then yes.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

So you're saying it's "fake difficulty" and "shit game design" for a character to only be able to take 5 hits instead of 1000?

I'm saying that making enemies bullet sponges and lowering the survivability of the player by arbitrary health and damage multipliers to make the game "harder" is lazy and poor design.

Make enemies smarter and not something you have to cheese to get past. Add additional movesets per difficulty, change weak points, do something other than multiplying their health and damage.

 

[The Last Stand]

Unskippable cutscenes, especially during a tough boss fight. Insult to injury.

 

[Basil II]

Games that don't let me play on the hardest setting until I've already beaten it.

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

Cutscenes that are skipped by any button, instead of just space/esc or whatever. I was just taking a screenshot of your shitty writing, I didn't want to skip it!

 

[Bender]

Cutscenes that are skipped by any button, instead of just space/esc or whatever. I was just taking a screenshot of your shitty writing, I didn't want to skip it!

I have that same issue with pausing cutscenes, I never want to press the pause button in the middle of a cutscene in case it suddenly becomes a "skip cutscene" button. This has led to multiple uncomfortable moments where I really need to have a piss but I don't want to risk missing a bunch of story so I'm kept hostage in my seat by a video game.

 

[Pier]

Not sure which CoD 4 it was, but the infinitely spawning enemies was just stupid. Would kill an enemy from a distance right out of there spawning point but I guess there was a clown car just around the corner that I couldn't see because as soon as one would drop another one would run right out to replace them. Killed any motivation to beat the game on Veteran.

 

[sasazuka]

here you have raycevick vid about Ferrari in racing games:

Hmm, I though I had already complained about Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends, also from Slightly Mad, in this very thread but nothing is coming up on search.

I really like Need for Speed: Shift and Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends uses the exact same engine right down to the map icons showing which curves you've mastered but all of the fun stuff in the game is locked behind really tedious scenarios where even the bronze targets have a high difficulty curves.

I have Ferrari Challenge: Trofeo Pirelli but the PS2 version (and the DS version as well). It's alright but I've never been able to master the Mont Tremblant course, which is disappointing as it's one of the few tracks I've visited in real life. (The game also has a track that is essentially Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, the Montreal F1 track, but they gave it a different name, removed the infamous Quebec flag wall out of the final turn, and rotated it, I presume to get around not having a license for the circuit. I wonder if that circuit's management doesn't license to anything other than Formula 1 games?)

I have both versions (Dreamcast and Playstation 2) of Sega's F355 Challenge, which controls better on Dreamcast due to the trigger buttons for gas and brakes but I do appreciate the PS2-exclusive "Good Driver" mode, and I also have OutRun 2006: Coast to Coast on PS2 and OutRun 2 SP on XBox (playable on XBox 360 but, on the 360, it has the sanity-destroying audio glitch where, if you get into a skid, which is a basic part of the game, the skid loop continues playing constantly, even if you start a new game or go back to the menu).

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

Games that don't let me play on the hardest setting until I've already beaten it.

Games that dont give you the completion rewards for lower difficulties than the one you just played. I just beat the game on hard, why must I play it on easy next?

 

[werbwub]

I'm saying that making enemies bullet sponges and lowering the survivability of the player by arbitrary health and damage multipliers to make the game "harder" is lazy and poor design.

Make enemies smarter and not something you have to cheese to get past. Add additional movesets per difficulty, change weak points, do something other than multiplying their health and damage.

There's only so much you can do before you have to tweak values of the enemy or risk making the game tedious. Imagine on the veteran difficulty of any of the Call of duty games instead of just tweaking the enemy values they just gave all the enemies rifles and only made them blind fire from cover. The Ai is much smarter but fighting them would be a major pain in the ass. Another example would if in Skyrim the dragons on higher difficulties never would never onto the ground unless you hit them in the wings with arrows or spells, once again smarter but tedious.

 

[Dante Alighieri]

There's only so much you can do before you have to tweak values of the enemy or risk making the game tedious. Imagine on the veteran difficulty of any of the Call of duty games instead of just tweaking the enemy values they just gave all the enemies rifles and only made them blind fire from cover. The Ai is much smarter but fighting them would be a major pain in the ass. Another example would if in Skyrim the dragons on higher difficulties never would never onto the ground unless you hit them in the wings with arrows or spells, once again smarter but tedious.

There's a massive discussion that can be had over difficulty in games. Value tweaking should one of the last resorts in making an enemy harder, as there's no engagement with the player beyond "use more bullets", and I think games should strive to engage the player in a fun and meaningful way. It's true that there's a fine line between tedium and fun, and while blind firing enemies is indeed harder it's also tedium and doesn't engage the player. If they peeked around corners and made tactical movements with one set of NPCs sending suppressing fire at the player that would be both engaging and difficult as the player has many meaningful options available. Maybe I've been spending a lot of time with game developers on discord who have a lot of problems with modern AAA game design, but I think this is a worthwhile discussion that gamers should be having in order to have better games.

When I choose Hard over Normal it's because I want to be challenged, and not just have to put more bullets into enemies to kill them, but when Hard is just a multiplier on health and damage then it's just a false promise of difficulty.

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Games that dont give you the completion rewards for lower difficulties than the one you just played. I just beat the game on hard, why must I play it on easy next?

Even worse than that was Time Attack in Dead or Alive 4. Three trophies for bronze, silver and gold, all determined by beating certain times. You'd think that that if you beat the gold time you would have beaten silver and bronze, but no. I played that mode exactly once and really lucked out, beat the gold time, was the seventh fastest in the world which was decent considering the game had been out for three months. Did not get the bronze and silver trophies. Then I went and got my ass kicked in online multiplayer because I'm not that good at fighting games, I'm only good at rushing the AI with stupid combos.