GameCentral readers pick holes in games they otherwise love, as everything from The Witcher 3 to Dark Souls comes under fire.
The subject for this week’s Hot Topic was suggested by reader Edone, who asked what it is you don’t like about the game or games you otherwise love? How would you fix the problem and what effect would that have on how you – and the wider world – think of the game?
We had plenty of suggestions, from recent hits to older titles, although Red Dead Redemption II did come up more than most. Although most people admitted they didn’t really mind the flaws as long as the rest of the game was good.
Forced conversation
I don’t know if it’s just because it’s recent but the first game that came to mind for this was Red Dead Redemption II. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game I enjoyed so much but had so many problems with. The controls and combat are clearly not very good, the game is far, far too long, and the fishing and a lot of the other mini-games are awful.
But the only thing I struggled to put up with is the forced conversations before and after a mission, where all you’re doing is riding away or back to camp. I know Rockstar like their talky characters but I was just so sick of the sound of Dutch’s voice by the end of it. All of them were annoying really and I had a hard time really bonding with any of them because I was forced to talk to them rather than doing it out of choice.
It just goes to show how good the open world is that I still really enjoyed the game despite all these problems. Although I agree it didn’t deserve to win any game of the year awards.
Takron
Rally awful
My favourite game over the last 20+ years has definitely been Gran Turismo, and whilst I make plenty of time to play as many games as I can, Gran Turismo has always been a staple of my digital diet.
But ever since the feature first appeared in Gran Turismo 2, I still cannot grasp how Polyphony Digital have carried on with this terrible feature: rally.
Now I’m a big fan of off-road racing, having owned every McRae and official WRC title since the PS1 and so I’ve seen the improvements over the years to the genre as a whole. But Gran Turismo never gets it right. Matter of fact, I’d go as far to say that rally in GT Sport is no better than it was at Tahiti in Gran Turismo 2.
I know full well how mandatory rally is in a game like Gran Turismo, can they please put some effort into creating some decent rally surfaces and realistic physics?
Cheerskis – AERO_HDT (PSN ID)
Grin and bear it
I loved Far Cry 4 and played it for hours, however one aspect of the game irritated me intensely, its healing sequences. Generally in games you need to heal at the most inconvenient moments, for example in the middle of a frenetic shoot out.
Healing in Far Cry 4 involves a laborious animation in which your character cauterises a wound or extracts a sharp object but it was the noises he made that always annoyed me.
Audible expressions of weakness (groans and wincing hisses) were not what I wanted to hear when I was fighting for my life.
Whatever happened to grin and bear it? What kind of heroic freedom fighter moans like a wuss when a leopard’s chomping on his leg?
The healing animations looked cool at first, and probably impressed preview audiences, but after a while they just disrupted the gameplay. All I wanted to do was survive and gun down more enemies, Far Cry 4 prevented me from doing that by showing me a sequence that was about as exciting as putting on a plaster.
msv858 (Twitter)
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Mitigating circumstances
No game is perfect, but there are a few 10 out of 10s! My favourite games tend to be the ones whose strengths are more important to me, but whose weaknesses are less of an issue. I’d imagine this is generally true of everyone, and why game preferences and reviews will always be at least partially subjective.
The Witcher 3 is probably my favourite recent game, despite the fact that the combat is merely decent, its relatively unexciting loot is gated by level, and its opening is somewhat slow. These drawbacks are offset for me by the non-linearity, frequently interesting choices and consequence and excellent dialogue and voice-acting, all backed up by some really nice graphics.
Matt (he_who_runs_away – PSN ID)
Micro management
I’ve played Mass Effect many, many times over the years and I still reckon the lore, setting, story, races, action and the ominous threat of the as yet unknown Reapers makes it the greatest space odyssey soap opera of this and the last generation. However, I just cannot face all the micro management of the weapons/ammo/armour anymore…
Seven characters (six when ya off Kaiden!) with four guns apiece; swap Frog’s bland rifle 1 for a bland rifle 2, swap Insect Face’s peashooter 3 for a peashooter 4, then check t’other lot to make sure they’ve all got the very best version of the guns that they’ll never use. Next comes the ammo, same rules, Hot Blue Nerd Lady’s ra-ta-ta rifle needs its hot ‘n’ spicy round 4 replacing with a hot ‘n’ spicy round 5 and so on and so on until me brain is fried!
What’s next you ask? Armour of course, same rules, same very kill me now… And of course, when all this is over you can, and indeed have to, sell all this excess tat to the shop otherwise you run out of inventory space and alas no more ra-ta-ta rifles for you until you sell them all one… at… a… time. 999 items and the best thing is you will get to do it at least three or four times during the game, lucky you. Of course, to fix these awful, awful problems all that needs doing is a classy remake in the style of 2. Sorted!
big boy bent
GC: It’s your favourite game and you call them Frog and Insect Face?
Never go back
The Library from Halo always deserves to be mentioned. I still think the game has the best campaign I have ever played and that is despite the Library and its mundane level design, art design, repetitive hordes of enemies (especially when waiting for The Monitor to open a doorway, etc). I’m not sure the level needed to be there for the sake of the story, as it just could have been a cut scene.
Going back to a game with obvious flaws I find very frustrating. I would love to go back and play GTA III as I never finished the last mission back in the day, but I tried a few years ago and found myself and the controls to be incompatible. It was a great shame as the game world is still amazing to explore and so well designed.
NatorDom
Catch up on every previous Games Inbox here
Too much exploration
My favourite game by far has to be Bloodborne, however when it comes to the varied and intricate areas throughout it none are as horrifying as the Nightmare Frontier. Starting off with the fact that you’re thrown against two computer-controlled hunters right at the start, followed quickly by silverbeasts that upon death spawn hateful maggots which inexplicably do more damage than most of the enemies in the area!
After that you’re greeted by a large poisonous swamp littered with crawler enemies that can vomit on you, which causes rapid poison build-up. Whilst you’re dealing with them you’re also getting large boulders thrown at you by giant yetis that have the high ground on you. Get through all that and you’ll run into Patches, who’s more than happy to kick you back into the depths of the poisonous swamp from which you just traipsed out of.
Thinking you’re nearing the end of the level you’re greeted by a brand new enemy, one that can empty your health bar by just looking at them, the dreaded Winter Lanterns. And then at the end of it all you’re rewarded with a boss fight against an enemy that arguably wasn’t worth the effort.
I’m not a fan of large areas that punish the player for exploring. I abhor Farron Swamp in Dark Souls III as another example. These areas tend to err more towards artificial difficulty for me personally and are usually more frustrating than genuinely challenging. The only way I could see of fixing these areas is possibly reducing the build-up of ailments when exploring or making the area more varied.
Honestly though, I’d have no idea how to fix or change them for the better but they don’t ruin my overall experience. There is one game that comes to mind which I played recently however that put me off it completely and that was Zelda: Breath Of The Wild. The weapon durability mechanic was an instant turn off and was single-handedly responsible for me stopping playing after several hours. As much as I had fun exploring the gorgeous world the fact that my weapons would break after a handful of hits made everything feel disposable in my eyes.
BR-Rangzeb (PSN ID)
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