Bad bits in otherwise good games

[Monkeyspill]

Speaking of bullshittery, Meat Circus in (the Xbox version of) Psychonauts was not fun. It was a great idea ruined by having to remember the whole level by rote and performing it almost perfectly. I’d post a video but can’t find one not ruined by someone annoying speaking over the top. They apparently made it a bit easier for the PS2 and PC release.

 

The final mission (The President’s Run) in Driver was also fucking horrible. Everyone mentions the garage tutorial, which was bad enough, but that final mission took me over a week. It wasn’t enough to learn the route and how to react at every point - you needed luck too. A bad hit (from any number of cars you can’t outrun) could spin you off the road - at which point it’s pretty much game over. And it was a wet level; that combined with the PS1’s low frame rate and response time meant your car took nearly a second to respond to every moment.

[Protocol Penguin]

Can I mention the wolf sections in Twilight Princess? It's not the best game in the Legend of Zelda series I realise (it has a very barren, dull overworld, for example) but the wolf bits were just annoying filler that let the whole package down, even in the Wii U remaster.

 

Speaking of the Zelda series, I never enjoyed the treasure hunt quest in Wind Waker either.

[Mega CD]

The Platform sections to Batman Returns on the Mega CD. 

[Alan Stock]

10 minutes ago, clumpyjamie said:

The final mission (The President’s Run) in Driver was also fucking horrible. Everyone mentions the garage tutorial, which was bad enough, but that final mission took me over a week. It wasn’t enough to learn the route and how to react at every point - you needed luck too. A bad hit (from any number of cars you can’t outrun) could spin you off the road - at which point it’s pretty much game over. And it was a wet level; that combined with the PS1’s low frame rate and response time meant your car took nearly a second to respond to every moment.

 

 

That mission drove me mental, it was a clusterfuck of getting slammed into walls and staring at a long loading screen every time you failed. The worst bit was the San Fran style downhill section, where the slightest nudge from a police car would send you into insane spinning jumps ending in a crash. It was so bloody random. It took me months of on and off play. Imagine level 5 GTA police on steroids but get hit once and you're dead, that's how bad it was. 

[Alan Stock]

Metal Gear Solid - Backtracking through half the game with your bloody keycard. And that endless concrete staircase. Actually FF7 had an insanely long staircase in the city too - you could choose not to take it but once you were in, you were in. 

 

Half Life, the Xen levels of course.

 

Zelda Ocarina of Time - the bloody dungeons with those giant creepy hands that reset all your progress.

 

Goldeneye - protecting Natalyia on the hardest difficulties (especially that bloody one where she is in the control room).

 

Bioshock's final boss

 

Myst - the underground mine cart section, infuriating and repetitive as hell

[Girth Certificate]

On 02/09/2018 at 13:05, neoELITE said:

The Jet Ski escape at the very end of Resident Evil 4

 

 It without that we’d never have this

https://m.imgur.com/t/funny/snKuPxy

[Oh Danny Boy]

It might be because I’m much more picky about games these days and have less tolerance for things that irritate me on them that a few things can make me switch off a game and never return to it.

 

Other than too many boss fights that I mentioned before, I feel boss fights have always suited 2D gaming much better and feel like a chore or a complete break of the flow on 3D games. It’s an ancient videogame mechanism that I’m surprised is still slavishly adhered to today.  

 

Cheap bosses especially. Rugal KOF 98 sticks in my mind.

 

Long unskippable cut scenes or just too many. The frequency really put me off Bayonetta. 

 

Over stretched long never ending story lines. Never could force my way through Red Dead Redemption, the story just dragged and it became a chore.  

 

Levels that are too long! Alice Madness Returns was a great game but those levels never ended. Ruined the experience for me a bit.

[David Kenny]

How about the "end" of Jet Force Gemini, where you had to go back through the whole game mopping up all the little teddy bear wankers you'd missed.

[disperse and recoagulate]

There’s a bit in one of the [first two] Broken Sword games where a wild boar runs at you and you have to quickly click to jump on a branch and you sort of shoo the pig in a certain direction and it runs through some long grass and creates a path for you. If you don’t know what to do and/or don’t jump on the branch, the pig just runs away off screen without trampling the path and NEVER COMES BACK so you cannot progress. I spent about a week trying to figure out where to go next, and asked everyone at school, and it wasn’t until my dad let me phone one of those game walkthrough hotlines that I found out if you missed it you were stuck and must reload. I had obviously already saved since the pig ran away so had to start the whole damn game again! Idiotic.

 

At least if you didn’t switch the buzzer in time during the handshake bit you died but could try again, but the pig running off was a one-time game breaking scene.

[Vin]

A criticism I'm reluctant to give BUT Alien Isolation's last half drags on and on and on. Should've knocked it on the head at the twelve hour mark gents. 

[Droo]

24 minutes ago, David Kenny said:

How about the "end" of Jet Force Gemini, where you had to go back through the whole game mopping up all the little teddy bear wankers you'd missed.

 

Which reminds me of this:

 

 

 

 

[Trumpets]

29 minutes ago, David Kenny said:

How about the "end" of Jet Force Gemini, where you had to go back through the whole game mopping up all the little teddy bear wankers you'd missed.

 

At the time I was willing to forgive that because of the Jimmy Saville impression during the end sequence, but now that probably counts against the game even more...

[Wiper]

9 minutes ago, disperse and recoagulate said:

There’s a bit in one of the [first two] Broken Sword games where a wild boar runs at you and you have to quickly click to jump on a branch and you sort of shoo the pig in a certain direction and it runs through some long grass and creates a path for you. If you don’t know what to do and/or don’t jump on the branch, the pig just runs away off screen without trampling the path and NEVER COMES BACK so you cannot progress. I spent about a week trying to figure out where to go next, and asked everyone at school, and it wasn’t until my dad let me phone one of those game walkthrough hotlines that I found out if you missed it you were stuck and must reload. I had obviously already saved since the pig ran away so had to start the whole damn game again! Idiotic.

 

For what it's worth, you were given bad advice by the hotline. You can actually get to the top of the mountain in Broken Sword II even if you let the boar not-quite tusk you, it's just a massive pain in the arse; a traditional point 'n' click blind maze through the jungle. It's still a terrible piece of design, but you didn't actually need to restart the game - just blunder through the jungle maze until you got to the top of the hill.

[Majora]

I had the same experience with the boar in Broken Sword 2. Was stuck on it for weeks as a kid and when I finally got a guide it told me to save before the boar and jump up to grab the branch, and to reload the save if I didn't manage to grab the branch, so I restarted the whole game again. 

 

I did try wandering the forest for ages before I got that guide but could never figure out a path. The second game generally wasn't as good as the first anyway but that was a particularly bad bit.

[Wiper]

Yeah, despite remaining fond of 2, the first is definitely the best game in the series, even if it too features a notably bad puzzle - indeed, one so bad that it has its own wikipedia article.

[Qazimod]

[Gabe]

4 hours ago, Oh Danny Boy said:

Levels that are too long! Alice Madness Returns was a great game but those levels never ended. Ruined the experience for me a bit.

 

Yeah, that game had a great atmosphere but the levels just dragged on and on without every really feeling interesting or fun. You can certainly understand why it flopped, which is a shame because the aesthetic deserved better.

[Nobuo's Organ]

All forced-slow-walking while we fit some exposition in bits in all games ever, a.k.a. the new face of the unskippable cutscene.

 

If I can't do anything meaningful just take control away from me, don't make me pretend to pretend to take part in your shit videogame story.

[deKay]

Sokoban puzzles in non-sokoban games.