- 2 days ago
For starters inflating the world's size for artificial added length...Even so why are the coolest moves and boss kills ALWAYS in cutscenes??
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00:00While video games have evolved mechanically and visually in a ton of wonderful ways,
00:04they're capable of being as flawed as any medium. For every revolutionary feature we
00:09can't believe nobody thought of earlier and genre blend that changes the definition of what games
00:14can be, there are those little painful things we just kind of wish games would stop doing.
00:19We're going to be getting very granular here, but as much as we celebrate the vast majority
00:24of our favorite games for everything they got right, this is our little safe space to point
00:28the finger at some video game cliches and pitfalls that kind of suck. I'm Jess from WhatCulture and
00:34here are 10 things video games really need to stop doing.
00:38Number 10. Not letting you play the bit that looks really fun to play.
00:43Now we don't like to establish too many must-haves for all video games as they're all
00:47fascinating and unique creatures in their own right. That said, if a game is going to have
00:52a character do something incredibly cool, you better bloody let us do it and not just sit back
00:57limply holding the controller, thinking about how awesome it would have been to actually play that
01:01bit. The largest offender in this particular category are games that don't let you land the
01:06final blow on that big boss that you've been sweating it out battling for the last hour or so.
01:12Instead, they let you get all the way to the end and then quietly let you know you can take a
01:16backseat while they enter into a cutscene where your character does something super cool,
01:20finishing off the encounter with an epic blow that you didn't even get to initiate.
01:24It's the equivalent of the video game taking credit for all your hard work while you sit
01:29back and go, okay, yay me. We're simply no longer having it.
01:34Number 9. Invisible Walls. This is one of the features on this list that's going to come off
01:39as an unfortunate reality for any devs trying to make open world games, but that doesn't stop it
01:45from being immersion-breaking and frustrating. There's nothing quite so unfitting with your sprawling
01:51gorgeous fantasy world than bumping up against an invisible wall. While, to be fair, this one isn't
01:56so prevalent in games these days, it hasn't entirely gone away. This goes double for games
02:01that show you something exciting off in the distance, but it turns out you can't actually
02:06get there and it doesn't exist in the game. Morrowind was game-changing for being set on an
02:11island and letting you swim off indefinitely in any direction by spawning repeating water tiles,
02:16if for some reason you wanted to do that. Meanwhile, playing an exploration epic like Fallout 3
02:21and hitting a certain point and then being told we cannot proceed any further for reasons
02:26was a little frustrating.
02:29Number 8. Doors that aren't actually doors. Last time I did a list in the same vein as this one,
02:35I said that if I was a politician, I'd run on the platform that crap ladders, which your character
02:40can't grip onto properly in video games need to end. For this list, I'll add, let doors be doors,
02:46and not just scenery that doesn't go anywhere. It's pretty standard to accept that a door is a
02:51fairly interesting thing in a video game. Usually home to a quest chest or mysterious interior,
02:56there's always something to entice us. Except for when a door is not a door, it's just a fancy piece
03:02of wall. Wandering all the way over to a curious looking door just to find it's not interactable
03:08makes us second guess all doors. While it often requires a herculean effort from a hundred strong
03:13developer team to ensure every door of every domicile is part of the level design and actually
03:19goes somewhere, it does make a difference to the gameplay experience. It's tricky to find an RPG or
03:25open world game that doesn't have at least a few doors that are just there for aesthetics,
03:30but when you can, you'll really notice it.
03:33Number 7. Mandatory Long Tutorial Sections.
03:36I'm not here to gatekeep, and I know some people who pick up a video game might be doing
03:40it for the first time and do need to be versed on the basics, but I think it's about time that
03:45tutorials which make us press W to move forward at least become optional. Spending full minutes
03:51learning how to walk and pull out a gun when the buttons are the same in almost every video game
03:56could at least be streamlined to allow for the majority of gamers who just want to get cracking.
04:01There's nothing terribly wrong with these mind-numbingly detailed tutorials,
04:05so long as it lets the rest of us skip through them without missing anything important.
04:10While games like Black and White 2, Nier Automata, Pokemon Sun and Moon, and more recently Deathloop
04:15have infamously painful tutorials, at least the latter lets you turn off tutorial messages if you dig
04:21into the menu settings. Bless Far Cry Blood Dragon for including its tutorial called Military Program
04:27for Idiots, which includes gems like Press X to demonstrate your ability to read.
04:33Of course, not every game can turn its tutorial into a joke, so for that, we'll tip our hats to
04:38games like Half-Life and Deus Ex that house their tutorials in training ground areas or menus,
04:43where you can get caught up in the basics if you need them, but they exist separately from the main game.
04:48All of that being said, if it's not the tutorial to Driver, at least we know it can always get worse.
04:55Number 6. Characters in Cutscenes Having Different Skillsets Than in Gameplay
05:00This one sort of exists in counter to our earlier entry about not getting to actually play the cool
05:05bits in cutscenes, but they revolve around the same issue, which is, sometimes the character we're
05:10playing doesn't match up with the character in cutscenes. Whether it's their personality, equipment,
05:15or skillset, there are a few occasions where the ludonarrative dissonance hits a little too hard.
05:20If you're not familiar with that one, it's basically when the story and gameplay mechanics
05:24don't line up with each other. For instance, Red Dead Redemption 2, fantastic as it is,
05:30falls into this trap, as the whole story revolves around the Vandalin gang repeatedly putting themselves
05:35in harm's way to scrounge together enough money to hightail it off to Tahiti. Which is fine,
05:40except if you've been busy off earning money as Arthur, you've got plenty of cash to throw
05:45everybody's way and solve any problem that comes up. But the game needs to ignore that so the story
05:50makes sense. Other prime examples of characters acting curiously differently in cutscenes include
05:56Cloud getting cornered by Shinra soldiers in Final Fantasy VII, even though he's blasted through the
06:02dudes without breaking a sweat for the last hour, and infamously hated Mass Effect 3 baddie Kai Leng
06:07donning unparalleled plot armor, despite Shepard taking down entire Reapers by this point.
06:13Then there's watching your level-capped beastly hero get sucker punched just so it can initiate
06:18the villain's last stand. Number 5. Binary Morality System
06:23Morality systems are exciting in role-playing games because they let you choose how you want
06:27to engage with the NPCs around you and the narrative as a whole. While that's all well and good,
06:32there's a difference between creating a choice-based morality system that's nuanced and one that's
06:38incredibly binary. Usually, it's the latter. Take Knights of the Old Republic, where you're either
06:43the ultimate light-side saviour and boy scout giving all your money away to the poor and saving the
06:48universe, or you're a murdery, pure evil Sith Lord right up there with a cartoon villain.
06:54A lot of these games boil down to being everybody's errand boy or killing anybody that looks at you
06:59sideways, and then they slap a morality system label on it and call it a day.
07:04Sure, it's still nice to have a choice, but if it's like Mass Effect where you're either
07:07sucking up to everybody or smashing that renegade action to punch NPCs in the face,
07:12it's a little basic. These morality systems often mean it boils down to being way too nice to everyone
07:18or way too mean, because games like KOTOR punish you for not devoting yourself fully to the light-side
07:23or dark-side lifestyle. 4. 3D platformers not indicating where you'll land
07:29This is an entry that doesn't need a lot of explanation. While things are getting better,
07:35especially in the case of studios who've been around the block when it comes to creating stellar
07:38platforming experiences, there are still platformers that are nigh on unplayable because you just can't
07:44be precisely sure about where it is your little guy's gonna land. This is one of those things that
07:50makes it pretty hard to go back and play older platformers, and in 2022, if it's a new game,
07:56it's pretty completely unforgivable. Sonic Unleashed is a great example of a game that fumbles with
08:01this mechanic, as in its night stages, the werehog doesn't have a shadow on the ground,
08:06making the platforming wildly frustrating. As game engines have evolved, this has become way less
08:12of a problem, but enough of us were burned by early 3D platformers that I think we can safely say
08:17we never want to see video games doing this ever again. 3. Scripted fail states
08:24There's something that feels particularly unfair about pulling off a tricky boss encounter or series
08:29of quick-time events only to arrive at a scripted fail state. So tumbling down a waterfall in Tomb
08:35Raider the remake at one moment is an insta-death, but if you do it four quick-time events later when
08:41you're supposed to, voila, you're at the next chapter. Heavy Rain until Dawn and Uncharted are
08:47also classic offenders of this particular frustration, where you're left wondering why
08:51you bother to avoid certain peril dozens of times, only to fall victim to scripted peril mere moments
08:57later. Outside of quick-time and platforming heavy sequences, the same thing can happen in boss
09:02fights that you aren't ever supposed to win. When you're absolutely trouncing a boss and the game
09:07interjects with a cutscene showing that you lost, it feels pretty unfair. A perfect example of this
09:14is the sci-fi butthead we've already mentioned once on this list, Massivex Kai Leng. It doesn't
09:19matter how easily you beat him up, the following cutscene has you lose because of reasons.
09:262. Respawning you without all the stuff you just used in the last attempt
09:30If you're failing at a game, usually you'd expect more hand-holding, not less. Not so for games that will
09:37let you fail at an attempt once, and then keep all the resources that you used in that attempt.
09:43Destiny 2 is a great example of games that screw you over in this particular regard.
09:47Die during a boss fight, and sure, you'll respawn, but you'll do so without the ammo you used in the
09:53last fight. If you're thinking somebody who couldn't pull it off the first time is probably
09:57not going to be able to do it with even less resources at their disposal, you'd be right. If the
10:03boss is going to come back swinging at full health, it feels like the least a game can do is let you
10:07have another shot at it with the arsenal you came in with at the start. On top of this,
10:11punishments for dying in general are pretty crappy, whether it's Dead Island sapping 10% of your money,
10:17or Borderlands 2 slowly sapping your ammo and money. While some people are gluttons for punishment with
10:23this kind of mechanic, plenty more of us could happily do without it.
10:27Number 1. My superhuman protagonist can't do stuff I can do.
10:31I'm putting this one at number 1 not because it's the most irritating thing video games do,
10:36or because it spoils video games that include it, but because it's my favorite tiny annoyance,
10:41it's pretty entertaining, and it comes up a lot.
10:44Of course, video games have to put limits on what our protagonist can do, otherwise we just breeze our
10:49way through games. But when our incredible Witcher mutant hero or Souls hero can't step over a three-foot
10:56fence, it's a little hard not to notice. It's instances like this that make games like Breath
11:01of the Wild and Assassin's Creed Odyssey stand out as refreshingly different, as everything is
11:06sensibly surmountable. Commander Shepard and Geralt's inability to step over rubble or climb ledges,
11:11or in Geralt's case, get himself out of water and onto a shore without a ladder or a very generous
11:17ramp to help him, is pretty annoying. Add to that things like Minecraft Steve's inability to climb two
11:22blocks without a ladder, The Last of Us's packed stairwells blocking whole floors, and instances
11:28in games like Silent Hill or Resident Evil where a glass window or wooden door blocks your path
11:33even though your backpack is chock full of firepower that could take care of it.
11:37I don't expect video game characters to be able to do everything, but if it's something an unfit gamer
11:42like me could do, it might be something we should revisit.
11:46That's the end of our list, but as always do let me know what you think down in that comment section,
11:51and if you can think of any things that you'd really like video games to stop doing.
11:55As always, I've been Jess from WhatCulture, thank you so much for hanging out with me.
12:00If you're liking, come say hi to me on my Twitter account where I'm at JessMcDonald,
12:04but make sure you stay tuned to us here for plenty more gaming goodness.
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