Bad bits in otherwise good games

[Qazimod]

21 minutes ago, Stanley said:

 

For me, the box (2x2) is the true horror. It's the only moment where you need a space that's two squares wide, and I never plan for it because I'm always setting up smaller gaps.

[Nick R]

The gun turret bit in Bayonetta

 

The Space Harrier bit in Bayonetta

 

The Hang-On bit in Bayonetta

 

The QTEs in Bayonetta

 

Angel Attack in Bayonetta

 

 

 

 

Those levels referencing Sega arcade games are fine in short doses on first playthrough, and are welcome as part of the game's general Sega-celebrating vibe. The problem is that they're not interesting enough as either racing or shooting games to justify how long they go on for.

 

Most of those things occur in the second half of the game. It's a shame that as the game goes on, there's an increase in frequency of boss fights and gimmicky one-off set-pieces. They may be spectacular on first playthrough, but they take you away from the best, most replayable thing about the game: fighting crowds of Applauds, Joys and Grace & Glories.

[Mike1812]

Oh I just remembered the jet ski in Uncharted 1. Terrible. 

 

And the blue guys in Uncharted 2. 

 

And the disappearing guys in Uncharted 3. 

 

And the final boss in Uncharted 4. 

[Droo]

Really any QTE event that failing results in instant death. 

 

Bonus hate if it just comes completely out of nowhere. 

[joemul]

Having to follow a CPU character who walks at a slower pace than your character, meaning you have to walk-stop-walk-stop-walk-stop. 

 

Just make them match your pace, whether you run or walk. 

[Pob]

3 hours ago, Kryptonian said:

The flying races in Lego Marvel Super Heroes.

 

My son couldn’t do it so asked me. No problem I thought as I have decades of experience playing games but Jesus Christ, the controls are total dogshit - a & b to control your height but there’s a delay between pressing them and the character responding. I have never been so disgusted with a game.

I actually found those to be quite fun once I got the controls and learned how wrangle the height controls. Go into boost mode for the ultimate risk/reward. 

[Qazimod]

30 minutes ago, Nick R said:

The gun turret bit in Bayonetta

 

The Space Harrier bit in Bayonetta

 

The Hang-On bit in Bayonetta

 

The QTEs in Bayonetta

 

Angel Attack in Bayonetta

 

All of those are fine. The "protect Cereza" bit however...

 

It's not like it's bad because of potential failure... it's bad because of the continuous camera cuts whenever she takes a hit. Just have the health bar flash or whatever.  

[Alex W.]

Having flashbacks to the grandfather of all those, DMC1’s shit flying sequence. Spacehost ruined his hand using a craw grip to keep boost held down.

[hughes]

Kamiya is probably the master of "bad bits in good games". 

[Marlew]

The stealth bit near the start of Wind Waker is why it took me a decade to play that game properly.

 

Gathering missions in Monster Hunter.

 

The Darker Side of gauntlet in Odyssey. Running the gauntlet is a great idea. Having loads of mini tests, essentially, is a great summative idea, in theory. In practice, if you don't immediately grasp what is being asked of you in a later section, the repetition of the first dozen little sections becomes unbearably dull and kills the sense of 'running the gauntlet'. It's like the worst boss run up ever in Dark Souls.

[nakamura]

2 minutes ago, Stanshall said:

The stealth bit near the start of Wind Waker is why it took me a decade to play that game properly.

 

Gathering missions in Monster Hunter.

 

The Darker Side of gauntlet in Odyssey. Running the gauntlet is a great idea. Having loads of mini tests, essentially, is a great summative idea, in theory. In practice, if you don't immediately grasp what is being asked of you in a later section, the repetition of the first dozen little sections becomes unbearably dull and kills the sense of 'running the gauntlet'. It's like the worst boss run up ever in Dark Souls.

Wind Waker is a series of some fantastic dungeons and the absolute shittest overworld ever. They made it so hard to enjoy.

[BadgerFarmer]

The final boss in Dead Cells. Yes, because I can't do it. But it seems like an unnecessary difficulty spike right at the end of a Roguelite game which requires you to start again each time you die. I find the rest of the game a breeze now, but it's still 45 minutes to get through it, only to get beaten again.

[Kryptonian]

44 minutes ago, Pob said:

I actually found those to be quite fun once I got the controls and learned how wrangle the height controls. Go into boost mode for the ultimate risk/reward. 

 

Fuck off

[Mr Do 71]

NPC's who block your path, especially in a doorway.

[Rsdio]

This is more of a general thing but it seems an appropriate place to moan about the hard on that Japanese developers always seem to have had for making you click through unnecessary text boxes, as though pressing X or A repeatedly is thrilling gameplay.

 

There are countless examples of this in good games but two from Zelda spring to mind after playing them last year. In the Wind Waker every time you walk in to buy an item from Beedle you have to press A five times, choose your item, press A four more times while he explains his fucking loyalty scheme then you have a final button press before you can buy another item. Then he'll explain the loyalty scheme again. There is no way of buying more than one item at a time or multiples of the same item. That's far from the only example in the game (the fishes are another obvious one) and over the course of 40-odd hours you do start to feel madness creeping in.

 

Breath of the Wild wasn't quite as bad with this, except for one thing in particular: upgrading your house. You have to go through the same tedious menus, patter and animations for every single upgrade. You couldn't just say 'Take it to the maximum level I can afford' or choose an upgrade tier that unlocks everything before it, you've got to do it all individually. Because I had the materials and like to tick things off when I can I ended up sitting there for a good twenty minutes clicking through boxes to fully upgrade the thing. To add insult to injury the builder guy acts like you're really impatient if you try to start the process again before he's taken his time sitting back down.

[Soulstar]

FF XII racing section, tap buttons to run and beat the people racing you, repeat again and again and again. 20 wins later and counting I research to find out how many there are. Turns out it is 100 races. Why the actual fuck do they need to have that?

[Alex W.]

Beedle’s whole bullshit in Wind Waker is part of the set up to one of the best and most unexpected interactive jokes Nintendo have done. The sheer audacity of those assholes.

[James Lyon]

Kleiner's hideout, and to the same degree Vance's, in Half Life 2. Good for first time exposition, but they just put me off doing a run through of the game due to the way they stop the momentum and go on for way too long.

 

(I realise you can just load up the next chapter but that's just not in the spirit of things.)

[Gringo]

I hated the final boss fight in Wolfenstein the new order. It must have took me 30 goes to do. Left me with a bitter memory of what was a good game.

[Minion]

Chaperone missions when the npc character just blindly takes damage without doing anything about it resulting in mission fail. Forced on rails sections, the beginning of Far Cry 5 has  a terrible one.

[Naysonymous]

The final level of Trine.  The entire game to that point was a leisurely paced whimsical puzzle platformer,  then for some inexplicable reason they turn it into a vertically scrolling endless runner with severe time pressure and loads of trial and error instadeath traps. At no point in the game were you prepped for this. 

[Keyboard Koala]

Those effin tadpoles tadstones tadtones.

[Minion]

The poison environment bit at the end of The Witcher 3, I actually gave up at that point.

[Retroid]

Probably a quarter of the missions in MGSV, retreading over the same location for the tenth time to do something trivial... I got really sick of the desert long before I unlocked the jungle.

 

[Isaac]

 

This fucking nightmare.

[ilpostino]

Pizza Delivery in Spider-Man 2.

[Droo]

The last level in Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker on the Sega Megadrive. 

 

After a decent platformer finding children, who appear to be hiding from Michael* the game turns into a second rate flight sim. 

 

 

 

 

*its only dawning on me now!  The programmers knew....

[Mawdlin]

Any game in which the environment saps your health due to its hazardous nature. I.e. anywhere outside in The Thing and the dark aether stuff in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Two great games killed by punishing you for trying to explore.

[iknowgungfu]

Stupid QTE events that should just be a button press. Eg - opening a hatch by turning a wheel should not require me to repeatedly press a button. Just open it and get on with the game. It requires no skill, no enjoyment and in most circumstances makes no impact in the game (unless you are in the midst of some time restricted section or enemy swarm). Still - always feels like a lazy and pointless thing to do. 

[Camel]

The last level of The Swindle is just soul-destroying given the amount of time it takes to get there.