Ghengis_John
[13] Hero
It's hard for me to come up with criticisms of things after the fact, because after they annoy me and after I get angry and say "what a lousy mechanic." and analyze why it's a lousy mechanic, I put the game down and forget all about them. Maybe it's part of my forgiving nature, maybe I ditch the memories because they make me unhappy, or maybe my memory is just crap, but whatever it is as much as I'll complain about something when I'm watching or playing it when I walk away I will eventually forget what bothered me in the first place. Unless I run into it again. Then it all comes flooding back to me.
I will name three that come to mind:
1. Third Person Games where things can shoot you from off camera. If the developers themselves have FIXED the camera angle this is an even more appalling sin.
2. Escort missions. These vary from delightful in rare instances to frustrating or horrifying as the norm. Whenever one of these comes up in any game I think we all breath a collective sigh of resigned frustration.
3. Scarcity. As something you encounter in life, it is expected from time to time as a matter of practicality and always unwelcome. Nobody likes going to the store and finding out something they wanted or needed to buy is out of stock, nobody likes opening the fridge to find out the milk is all gone and nobody likes waiting in line to access a limited number of anything. As something you encounter in games it is all together baffling. You have the option of removing one of the least enjoyable aspects of life and you choose to include it? As Penny Arcade's Tycho once said: "This is like receiving a magical box that can create anything you can dream of, and the first thing you make with it is AIDS." This pertains to ANY and ALL instances of scarcity in games including and not limited to:
A Limited supply of XP available.
A finite supply of currency.
Anything that requires you collect materials that are not readily available.
Any material that has a one in six million chance of dropping.
Any game with a limited amount of health restoration.
Any game that only allows you to save a limited number of times.
The problem magnifies in RPG's where you have multiple teammates. If you see a sword in a shop and a gun in a shop, but there will only ever be enough money to buy one or the other, one team mate will suck, forever. If XP is only shared when somebody is in the party and there's only so much to go around, everyone will eventually be 6 levels below the main character.
As a paragon of bad design decisions, Silent Hill 4 included all of these scenarios in one convenient place. I thought it had some nice ideas, I would have liked to have finished it... but I don't hate myself that much.
I will name three that come to mind:
1. Third Person Games where things can shoot you from off camera. If the developers themselves have FIXED the camera angle this is an even more appalling sin.
2. Escort missions. These vary from delightful in rare instances to frustrating or horrifying as the norm. Whenever one of these comes up in any game I think we all breath a collective sigh of resigned frustration.
3. Scarcity. As something you encounter in life, it is expected from time to time as a matter of practicality and always unwelcome. Nobody likes going to the store and finding out something they wanted or needed to buy is out of stock, nobody likes opening the fridge to find out the milk is all gone and nobody likes waiting in line to access a limited number of anything. As something you encounter in games it is all together baffling. You have the option of removing one of the least enjoyable aspects of life and you choose to include it? As Penny Arcade's Tycho once said: "This is like receiving a magical box that can create anything you can dream of, and the first thing you make with it is AIDS." This pertains to ANY and ALL instances of scarcity in games including and not limited to:
A Limited supply of XP available.
A finite supply of currency.
Anything that requires you collect materials that are not readily available.
Any material that has a one in six million chance of dropping.
Any game with a limited amount of health restoration.
Any game that only allows you to save a limited number of times.
The problem magnifies in RPG's where you have multiple teammates. If you see a sword in a shop and a gun in a shop, but there will only ever be enough money to buy one or the other, one team mate will suck, forever. If XP is only shared when somebody is in the party and there's only so much to go around, everyone will eventually be 6 levels below the main character.
As a paragon of bad design decisions, Silent Hill 4 included all of these scenarios in one convenient place. I thought it had some nice ideas, I would have liked to have finished it... but I don't hate myself that much.
