Good games with surprising bad design choices

R

ronito

Member
For example:

Oblivion:
- Take away all that varied architecture and landscape of Morrowind, and replace it with generic european architecture and landscape.
- Man faces (wtf)
- With so many NPCs, you'd think they'd have more than 5 people voicing them.

Suikoden Tierekris:
- Only Save points. On a portable RPG? Really?

EA Active
- No way to track weight via the wii board
 
Any DS game that doesn't let you advance text with any of the 6 buttons available. Seriously? I like the stylus but don't be greedy.
 
Super Paper Mario

You often need to flip the world from 2D to 3D to progress by pressing A. Only Mario has this ability, despite the A button doing absolutely nothing for every other character, whose abilities are activated by pressing down.
 
Why do all fighting games never let me back out of the Character Select screen. O/B should go back, not select a character.
 
Halo 1,2,3 - the flood. And to think we all thought they learned after the library (which is kind of fun in co-op) then they gave us Cortana.

ronito said:
For example:

Oblivion:
- Take away all that varied architecture and landscape of Morrowind, and replace it with generic european architecture and landscape.
- Man faces (wtf)
- With so many NPCs, you'd think they'd have more than 5 people voicing them.

Suikoden Tierekris:
- Only Save points. On a portable RPG? Really?

EA Active
- No way to track weight via the wii board
Click to expand...

Come on, for Oblivion, you didn't even mention level scaling! Completely ruined any sense of exploration or discovery for me, which knocked the game down a notch or two.
 
For me it would have to be the lack of mission checkpoints in Guerrilla: Red Faction. Same reason I gave up on GTAIV. I raged particularly hard during one mission where I had to rush into a civilian area being bombed all to hell by the EDF. Every time I reached the area some civilian was turned into pudding by mortars before I even had my bearings. Yay another ten minutes of driving from the mission start point. So frustrating.
 
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This is something easy for me as I just recently played this game over the summer in my spare time.

Final Fantasy XII

1. It is beneficial to make every single character the same on the license board because melee attacks and White Magic are insanely over-powered.

2. The ludicrous amount of grinding one has to do to maintain level and gil.

3. Lack of save points before a boss after an hour long dungeon.

4. Cheap Bosses

5. The main character serves no purpose for continuing the journey. Characters surrounding him are much more interesting than the lead itself.

You may get the impression that I utterly hated this game after all my complaints but it's somehow still managed to be somewhat fun.
 
Lunar dragon song. I very much like the game, and can look past some stuff...........But MY GOD............. Behold the travesty of bad design.
 
Rock Band 2
-No star display in quickplay. I'm much more likely to replay a song if I see I need to get another 2 stars instead of another 40,000 points.
-Having character clothing tied to an individual character instead of a communal pool. It sucks having a friend create a character and not being able to wear anything outside of the default clothes.
-Removal of classic career mode. I appreciate the concept of BWT, but I would still like the option to unlock songs the old fashioned way.
-Strum limit :(
 
Prototype and making it frustrating to just run around and have fun in the late game. Helicopters start randomly chasing you, monsters try to hurt you. Just let me run around.
 
Brave Story - No saving on the world map! WTF - I can not see a world map and NOT be overcome with the urge to save, its in my blood. I never did get past that but I enjoyed the first 2 hours and the reviews seemed positive enough. A good game with a very very bad design choice
 
The whole .hack GU series. You can fill out Ryu books by completing certain objectives, and unlock extra stuff, but you have to go back to your guild space to check your status. In the first .hack games you had the books always on you and could check them whenever you were in a town. Also weapons and armor don't stack in your inventory, if you have three of the same sword each one takes up it's own space. They stacked in the first games. They removed some of the dumber and more irritating parts of the Ryu books from the first games and replaced them with even worse quests. You have to go find the specific NPC that gave you the quest to check your status. Every quest has a different NPC.
 
Resident Evil 1 - Only 6 inventory slots. Been playing through this again recently and damn its frustrating sometimes.

Lost Odyssey - Simple battles take way too long.
 
Dragon Quest VIII

You want to save? Well you better listen to the minute and a half of dialogue that is mandatory EVERY FUCKING TIME you want to save because, guess what? YOU CAN ONLY SAVE IN CHURCHES.

You want to know how many EXP you need to level up a party member and determine if staying and grinding for five minutes is worth it? Well, better walk all the way to the previous town and find the church so I can ask somebody how many more EXP I need.

Want to know how many more skill points you need before you get the next ability? Well you better go all the back to Port motherfucking Prospect.
 
Link's Awakening/The Oracles, with their tedious item switching and a world seemingly designed specifically to exacerbate the problem.
 
Bionic Commando.

Its a great game ruined by bizarre design choices such as the blue radiation fog, loading between each small environment and not having red haired retro Spencer as the default model.
 
The original Metroid NES' lack of a map.



I'm also tempted to bring up the few and far between save points in Metroid Prime 1, but in hindsight I can see that the choice led to greater difficulty and an added sense of tension and fear (of dying) to the game. It actually turned out to be a good, albeit frustrating, choice.
 
RE4:Wii - sniper rifle aimed with control stick. Maybe this was some game engine issue, but it is really annoying.
Tenchu:Wii - aiming everything with control stick - why?
 
Final Fantasy Tactics - No "run" option or a "no random encounters" item. When doing the side quests and stuff late in the game sometimes you just want to go from one side of the map to the other without a hassle
 
Magemasher13 said:
Dragon Quest VIII

You want to save? Well you better listen to the minute and a half of dialogue that is mandatory EVERY FUCKING TIME you want to save because, guess what? YOU CAN ONLY SAVE IN CHURCHES.

You want to know how many EXP you need to level up a party member and determine if staying and grinding for five minutes is worth it? Well, better walk all the way to the previous town and find the church so I can ask somebody how many more EXP I need.

Want to know how many more skill points you need before you get the next ability? Well you better go all the back to Port motherfucking Prospect.
Click to expand...

Those problems are in all of the Dragon Quest games. It's bad design by tradition.
 
Dead Rising and the phone calls from Otis
(no, not the save system ;) )
... everything would be almost perfect if I didn't have to answer the phone in the middle of a horde of zombies. :/
 
Neuromancer said:
Far Cry 2- respawning guard checkpoints
Click to expand...
Amen brother, this must have been the most annoying thing this gen for me. Let it be possible to wipe out guardposts forever Ubisoft! They could have put some people out in the jungle too, so you could encounter enemies sometimes while just exploring the amazing scenery.

JMC said:
Resident Evil 5: The controls.
Click to expand...
I hated them in RE4, and I gave up RE5 after 10 minutes. Have Capcom ever played other third person shooters lately?
 
Metroid Prime series - Key collection quests. Especially in Echoes. The end of game key quest was like the one negative part of the first game, so for the sequel they... add even more key quests? WTF? They toned it down in Corruption, but I still don't understand why they even had them in the first place.
 
Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for me. I loved every dungeon that wasn't the main one. Time limits, retreading old ground, totally turned me off from the game.
 
I still think that Bioshock would have been better served with a more traditional death system. It's hard to care about death when it has no consequences.

The patch to turn them off was very welcome.
 
Any Ubisoft game for the past couple years. It's like they come up with cool concepts and then have meetings on what to throw in the game to completely fuck it all up.

Prototype
Crappy melee against foes that don't explode after the first hit.
Unblockable attack combos from the foes you can actually have a decent melee fight with
Bullshit missile juggles and knockbacks (Despite all this the game still managed to kick much ass but it could have been so much better).

GTAIV
Oversensitive wanted system - punch a bum at 3am in the ghetto with no one around, miraculously get a star and instead of stars fading if you hide out police magically drive right to your location leading you to either go on a killing spree or drive around like an idiot trying to get out of the search radius only to have a cop car spawn right in front of you as you're just about to get away.

Sluggish controls - Euphoria is great but I always feel like I'm fighting the game for control of Niko. Fall down, prepare to spend 5 seconds waiting for him to get up and go through this little animation before you get back control and can do anything, all while getting your ass riddled with lead.

Infamous
No New Game + or fuckall to do in the city after beating the story besides collectathon bullshit.

Killzone 2
Crappy controls (although the recent precision control update makes it a little better)
Making your character 4 feet tall
 
You guys are missing the absolutely worst design choice ever made!

121146_large.jpeg


The clouds and the bushes are the same sprite!
 
Lost Odyssey and it's 1994 turn based battle system. It would have received much better reviews had it been designed with a more modern battle system.

Call of Duty 2, 3, 4 and 5 with the never ending spawning enemies until you cross in invisible line. Hope MW2 will fix this as IW stated they would.
 
Dead Man Typing said:
I still think that Bioshock would have been better served with a more traditional death system. It's hard to care about death when it has no consequences.
Click to expand...

Doesn't disabling the vita-chambers more or less accomplish this?
 
Another one worth mentioning,

The Triforce hunt in The Wind Waker.
It still remains my favorite in the series and one of my favorite games overall, but admittedly this part of the game always has me bummed out. In order to do it properly, you're practically required to fill out your entire sea chart. That in itself isn't bad, but making it a requirement isn't a good thing.

Had they scattered bits of the hunt through the game, I think it would've been an OK thing, but taking all of it in one huge chunk is a bit too much.
 
Metal Gear Portable Ops had a terrible camera setup that made the game basically unplayable. There's a bad design choice right there. The game has so many great ideas around building a team, getting players from wifi, equipping items for your team etc, but it's just not fun because of the camera. What's worse is that there already existed an obvious, fine camera for a Metal Gear game on a system with just one analog stick. They should have just grabbed the ideas from MGS1.
 
MGS:POOPS: the camera. Really frustrating to do the finger gymnastics in order to change the view. MGS1 on the psp is pure bliss in comparison.
 
Mister D said:
GTAIV
Oversensitive wanted system
Click to expand...

I felt as though GTA: Chinatown Wars also suffered from this problem. It was like stealing a car carried at least a 75% chance of getting a star. And this was offset to an extent by the awesome ability to smash cop cars up to lower the star rating, but it still ensured by the time you were able to just drive the car without being chased, it'd be half destroyed.
 
any flying vehicules in any GTA game. I have no idea how they manage to screw it up all the time, to the point of being unfun and feeling broken.
 
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