Three Great Game Design Evils

[TaekwondoNJ]

I never would have guessed there was so much hate for the Hades level in GoW. The spikes on the logs didn't hit me at all, and I only got hit by the ones on the climbing part like 3 or 4 times. Didn't slow the flow of the game down that much, there were platforming parts in the rest of the game as well.

What really sucked about that game was the bugs. GoW has to be the buggiest game I've played in years. Nothing as exciting as fighting the final form of the final boss just to have the game randomly lock up on you, making you watch several minutes of cutscenes again AND fight all the way back up to the final boss. Talk about annoying.

[Cowutopia]

I wish the HL2 teleporter scene had been a scripted cut-scene because then maybe I could have skipped it, since it was painfully predictable and ran way too long. I really don't want control during cut-scenes, directing my POV towards the character speaking and shit. It's not immersive. It's dull. Just get them over with.

As long as you actually have something to do during an in-game sequence, it's not bad at all. Being able to choose whether to sit and watch the action or continue to advance the plotline; that's how it should be programmed, and some games do this already, and do it well.

You should be able to, as the main character, interrupt a speech with a voiced interjection and continue the action. Think in the beginning of an FPS when someone is explaining controls. Press a "skip" button and you say, "It's alright seargent, you don't need to cover the basics with me." Bit over. Game continue.

[Jeremy]

You know, Kratos was probably on the spinning logs with spikes for a grand total of about 40 seconds or so, assuming you're not terrible and keep falling. Climbing the pillars with spikes with a bit longer, but not very. I spent more time turning the rooms in Rings of Pandora.

Now those parts killed the flow of the game for me. TaekwondoNJ, I didn't have the misfortune of running into bugs when I played through it. Although I would be very pissed if they screwed up the final battle, because that ruled.

[Cowutopia]

What really sucked about that game was the bugs. GoW has to be the buggiest game I've played in years. Nothing as exciting as fighting the final form of the final boss just to have the game randomly lock up on you, making you watch several minutes of cutscenes again AND fight all the way back up to the final boss. Talk about annoying.

This is true, I've experienced a lot of bugs and my friends have noticed even more.

Yeah I got that. I'm just saying he's ridiculous for thinking that its better for games to be too easy than for them to be balanced. Very hard games are the most fun to me (as long as they have a learning curve and don't just chuck you into instant death situations), and if I can't play that, then I'd rather play a balanced game where I at least have to try a LITTLE rather than a very easy game where I can turn my back to the screen and still play through everything. He's saying games should be either very hard (which I agree with) or very easy (which is retarded). And I've always said RPGs don't require skill to play, they just require time to level your characters. Which is bullshit.

When you work hard for a reward in a game, it's always nice to be able to completely dominate for at least a level or so. Having your upgrades match the difficulty ramp-up stride for stride is shit.

[avatar]

Back when I worked in a video game store one of the two most common complaints was how MGS would be better without all that story crap (the other was how Final Fantasy VII would be better if didn't have such a terrible battle system). These are the same people that bought systems almost solely for sports games and were 90% of the store's business. Maybe that's not a shared view nationwide but they seemed like a good representation of the casual gamer and a lot of them don't like cutscenes.

And how are complaints against it shallow?

Becuase most of them are 'They take forever.' when most game have CG cutscenes for 3 minutes a piece, or the great ' I don't want to switch my mode" As if their brain is going from red to blue whenever they stop controlling a character.

Those kind of people wouldn't buy a MGS or Final Fantasy anyway. They play sports game as you pointed out and cutting all the cutscenes out of MGS isn't going to make it magically more appealing.

Well, if you look at old 32-bit games... there were a LOT more cutscenes. Virtually every game had them. The RPGs had 20-40 minute noninteractive sections. Nowadays, fewer games have them, and they're shorter and more storytelling is done in-game.

What does that tell you? People don't like noninteractive CG, as a rule.

Or maybe they have just gotten better at telling an effective story with less CG time. I have played FF7,8, and 9 ever since Advent Children came out and I noticed that all 3 games had a large amount pf cutscenes but were used effectively better each game so i didn't notice it as much. It's not a issue of not having CG, just using them well. Not as a crutch to tell your story.

[Cowutopia]

Becuase most of them are 'They take forever.' when most game have CG cutscenes for 3 minutes a piece,

3 minutes is almost the length of a full commercial break. Do you like commercials?

[avatar]

I hate that comparision.I have never seen a CG movie where the focus of the scene was different every 30 seconds. A CG movie is almost always focused on telling you a solid narrative whereas T.V commercials are completely random and never stay on topic.

[Joust Williams]

CG usually = Japan

Japan != solid narrative (or more appropriately, Japan = !(solid narrative))

Thus, hell with CG. In fact games should be REQUIRED to have in-engine cutscenes if they're going to do cutscenes.

[MarkRyan]

Thus, hell with CG. In fact games should be REQUIRED to have in-engine cutscenes if they're going to do cutscenes.

Don't necessarily agree with the rest of your statement, but this part is something I can get behind. I really hate CG in games.

[MechDeus]

I think we're also at the point where CG really isn't needed anymore, unless you're rushing something for E3 and don't have anything to show in the first place.

I did find it funny seeing a CG clip from FFVII recently and remembering back to when my friends and I would talk about how awesome it would be when the in-game graphics looked as good as that.

Mass Effect is the exact kind of thing we should be moving towards. More involvement and direct control of a character and less removal of the player from the game. Far more interesting and entertaining instead of "playing" someone I have no control over. Even unbroken narrative like Half-Life, Breakdown, and Rainbow Six: Las Vegas helps a lot as I'd really like to see all uncontrollable cutscenes down to a minimum whenever possible. If it's something like time passing or some otherwise intensely boring task, then sure, skip ahead or just give us a little clip of part of it (like the wait command in Shenmue 2) but otherwise we should be moving towards making games playable in every respect.

Becuase most of them are 'They take forever.' when most game have CG cutscenes for 3 minutes a piece, or the great ' I don't want to switch my mode" As if their brain is going from red to blue whenever they stop controlling a character.

It was primarily, "I don't want to hear about any of them and I just want to get back to kicking ass."

Those kind of people wouldn't buy a MGS or Final Fantasy anyway.

Well, they did. They'll buy anything hyped or that looks pretty in commercials.

They play sports game as you pointed out and cutting all the cutscenes out of MGS isn't going to make it magically more appealing.

They did say they enjoyed playing the game and removing the cutscenes would make it more enjoyable. They weren't playing for the story, they were playing because they loved fucking with guards, setting up traps, shooting guys, etc.