Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!

[Tengukami]

Ernest Adams goes down a pretty extensive list of what he considers game design done wrong. Some of these things might be familiar to you, some of them not. What I'd like to know is: what do you think? Where is he on target, and where is he off base?

[?q]

Ultimately I think he has it right.  Some of his Bad Twinkie principles are not necessarily bad if done correctly ("Amnesia in the Game Beginning" was done very well in TWEWY) but the potential for abuse is obvious.

I don't really understand the "Easy Mode is supposed to be Easy" gripe though.

The rest of my post was me reading through and thinking fondly-ish of good/bad examples of what he was talking about, but that's not what you were asking about.

[Tengukami]

Well sure, include examples. The more the merrier.

[Stuffman]

I don't really agree with his complaints regarding lack of realism, for instance the "Bad Guys with Vanishing Weapons" thing. Can you even imagine how much it would destroy game balance if any weapon an enemy used against you immediately became your property? Realism impedes gameplay enjoyment more often than it helps it, and complaining about it is annoying, pointless nitpicking. Why not complain about how the player can survive more than one gunshot wound while you're at it?

Gameplay elements only need to be intuitive, not realistic. There's nothing wrong with lifting a stone block twice my size over my head if it's immediately obvious I can do so.

[?q]

Verrawell...

Games Without Maps - This complaint was lodged at games like Quake where everything looks the same, and I can fully understand where he's coming from here.  However, it is possible to go too far with this.  One of my personal pet peeves is that Super Mario 64 DS was ruined with its map feature, as it made the exploration-based Stars trivial.  Mario games have always been about finding random things when you're not trying.

A related complaint would be "Games With Inadequate Maps".  Daffy Duck: The Marvin Missions (zip it) did have a map, and it did bear some resemblance to the stage, but...

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Incongruous or Fantasy-Killing Elements - Related to completely out-of-the-genre boss battles.  This CAN be done well - Kirby Super Star's Computer Virus comes to mind - but usually when a boss battle becomes a minigame, it becomes a chore and actually kind of embarrassing to play even if nobody's watching.

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Sort of a tangent to the next one, but

You can add to the player?s play-time by creating ridiculous obstacles, but you?re not really adding to his or her enjoyment, and that?s supposed to be the point.

This made me immediately flash back to Super Paper Mario.  2-3 was one of many legitimate reasons to hate that game as you spent seven minutes holding your control stick rightward.  (Or cheated.)

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You come to a locked door. The obvious solution is to find the key, but it?s also the most boring, so maybe the game provides some other way to get it open. But like as not, there?s only one solution, whatever it is.

This is actually averted in the two console Fire Emblem games where breaking the door down is generally better than picking it, but just imagine how easy Zelda games would be if you could pick locks.  (The doors that slam shut behind you and put iron bars up are a bit more formidable though...)

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Kill Monster/Take Sword/Sell Sword/Buy A Different Sword/Kill Another Monster - You can't really avoid this in RPGs, and in games that give you tons of money (lategame Golden Sun) you can pretty much do this freely.

A game that makes this Twink nasty and combines it with Grinding is Riviera, where unit growth was directly tied to wearing out weapons until you picked up a sometimes-useful skill from it.  I spent as much or more time grinding Practice Mode than actually playing the game.

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Poor Acting - There's hammy, there's accidentally bad, and then there's just awkward.  The latter pretty much sums up all but the first of Radiant Dawn's cutscenes, particularly every scene Mist is in.

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Neat, Tidy Explosions - Most games don't really have the capability or interest in developing particle physics or realistic burning-flesh effects, so I'm not sure how justified this Twink is.  I'm not sure if Link's Bomb Mask qualifies as a subversion...

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No On-Demand Save Game and/or No Pause Game - I know both Super Mario Galaxy games refuse to pause if you are in hitstun or sliding, which has a nasty tendency to coincide with when you're about to die.  As for on-demand saving...  I never really had a problem with it back in The Day tbh.

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Adolescent Armageddon - Frankly, not every game has to be deep.  A generic shmup could have the plot "Save the world; here's a teeny fighter jet" and that's it.  The plot isn't really that important.

In games where the plot actually IS claimed to be important but it doesn't actually do anything non-cliche with it, this becomes an issue.  Riviera gets to be used as an example again, as it suddenly tries to pretend its plot is serious and meaningful 72% of the way through the game and does a fairly bad job of it.

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Having to stand in (or select) exactly the right spot - Fire Emblems 6-10 all employ this in their desert Chapters, and FE10 abuses it throughout the game.  As an addition, not only must you stand in the right spot but there's an element of luck as to whether you actually find what's there.  This would be remotely intriguing if there was some hint as to where the items are, and outside Radiant Dawn you actually ARE told where to look, but in FE10 the only way to find some of the best items in the game is to look up where the correct spaces are and camp out on them.

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Too few audio clips for a given situation - HI I'M DAISY
Most Mario games with voice acting fit this tbh, especially the remakes of SNES games where they had to add it in.

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Birds that carry swords - I'm guessing the Takkuri bird in Majora's Mask has a good reason to carry your sword, but that's not important. 
Monster drops are a whole touchy issue unto themselves.  You have to give people SOME reward other than EXP for fighting monsters, so I'm not sure how big a deal this is supposed to be.

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Bad Guys With Vanishing Weapons - Actually, The Wind Waker dealt with this very well.  Link actually COULD use enemy weapons, although they were mostly too big for him.

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No Variable Skill Levels - :dealwithit:

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Overuse of Darkness - Probably one of the only flaws to The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, although I'm not sure how much of it was intentional.

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Time-Wasting Random Encounters - I swear Final Fantasies 4 and 6 are unplayable because of how frequently you randomly encounter enemies - never mind how randomly you would fare against them in the case of FF4.

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Unplayable Camera Angles and Seizing Control of the Camera at Bad Times - In 3D games this is always going to be an issue, especially when you have areas that require precise controls unsuited to a swiveling camera or just want to have a fixed camera for effect.

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Wrecking a Game's Balance for the Sake of A "Cool Feature" - In reading this phrase you learned everything you needed to know about Kirby Air Ride.

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In-game dialog that refers to real-world things - Played up at length in Super Paper Mario for laughs.  Or at least that's what they were trying for.

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For example, you've got 18 hours to stop an atomic bomb going off. Oh, I know, let's spend lots of precious minutes flirting with an in-game character (Metal Gear Solid).

It would be unfair to call Riviera out again when this probably applies to every harem game.

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Uninterruptible Movies - I see this and raise you unskippable walls of dialogue.  For extra pain, try Fire Emblem's (skippable but too far) walls of dialogue a t _ s n a i l _ s p e e d .

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Bad Manuals and/or Bad Tutorials - Catching that first fish was the hardest part of Twilight Princess.  I'm not joking.

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Bad Translation and Localization - I apologize to everyone who lives in PAL.

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Dominant Strategies - Pokemon and Fire Emblem are both notorious for letting you cruise through the game with only your starter.

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Amnesia at the Game's Beginning - See previous post.

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Time-Constrained Demos - One of many things that showed that Brawl was first and foremost a solid brick of marketing.  (But Brawl had enough cool stuff to be worthwhile anyway)

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Fake Interactivity - One of the complaints I saw about Golden Sun - namely that by and large your choices don't actually change anything major.  Well, yes.  It's pretty difficult to NOT make a linear RPG, so this is more of a trope than a Twink.

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Setting the Player Up to Fail - To make a long story short, yes, it's impossible to get 101% in Donkey Kong Country without a guide.  100% is possible but highly unlikely.  101%?  Just no.

Most of the time it's not immediately obvious that the player is guaranteed to fail a given mission, and if it's possible to survive for any length of time this can lead to a very frustrating time.

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There's nothing wrong with lifting a stone block twice my size over my head if it's immediately obvious I can do so.

Link equips Golden Gauntlets and lifts GIANT GRANITE TOWERS OVER HIS HEAD.
I'm not sure if he would complain about that or not :cool:

[hyorinryu]

Wrecking a Game's Balance for the Sake of A "Cool Feature" - In reading this phrase you learned everything you needed to know about Kirby Air Ride.


Would you elaborate on that, I'm just curious what you're talking about. I didn't unlock everything in the game, but I'm going to guess that you're talking about gliding, or the Legendary machines.

[?q]

Wrecking a Game's Balance for the Sake of A "Cool Feature" - In reading this phrase you learned everything you needed to know about Kirby Air Ride.

Would you elaborate on that, I'm just curious what you're talking about. I didn't unlock everything in the game, but I'm going to guess that you're talking about gliding, or the Legendary machines.

The entire premise of Kirby Air Ride is Here's a bunch of cool stuff; we didn't balance it much but it's like a giant sandbox so do whatever.

Bulk Star is unconditionally the slowest vehicle in the game.  Surprisingly given that it's a Legendary Air Ride Machine, Hydra isn't that far behind for the same reason.
Swerve Star will beat everything except Meta-Knight in any race that matters (which is fine by me since that's my favorite vehicle).
Meta-Knight is for all intents and purposes broken.  King DeDeDe, on the other hand, is capped at being mediocre in general.
NOVA help you if you play City Trial and wind up fighting DeDeDe.

Etc.  Balance was never a concern.

[Krimmydoodle]

Sort of a tangent to the next one, but This made me immediately flash back to Super Paper Mario.  2-3 was one of many legitimate reasons to hate that game as you spent seven minutes holding your control stick rightward.  (Or cheated.)

Let's not forget walking to the dead end in Chapter 5 with three key blocks, running back to town, and talking to someone who tells you to grab a pencil and write down the combination 132...  221... 3212312312312312312312121213132121313121321321312121313121212131312121312312313212131213213213123131321212131313122312

That one also overlaps with his complaints of lazy puzzle design.



Or the fighting 20 pointless mooks comprising 90% of Chapter 6 (at least when SMRPG lacked a "real dungeon" for its 4th star, Star Hill was quick and painless and you could quickly move on to the awesome 5th chapter).



There's also having to do the second Pit of 100 Trials twice for no reason other than because the designers said so, though that's a sidequest and a little harder to complain about as it's optional material.  Still, if they ran out of challenges, I'd rather they were honest and gave me my damn prize rather than telling me to do it again.  I got through that Pit and enjoyed its challenge, got to the end, was told to do it again, spent 5 minutes jumping around the empty room randomly looking for a hidden switch or for the mysterious voice from nowhere to say that patience was the real test or something, then I exited the dungeon was decided I was done with SPM's fake length bullshit.

Uninterruptible Movies - I see this and raise you unskippable walls of dialogue.  For extra pain, try Fire Emblem's (skippable but too far) walls of dialogue a t _ s n a i l _ s p e e d .

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

[Ghaleon]

I'm most likely going to give a big response, but I'm hella busy, still though, I'll post for now saying I like this thread. I'm eager to read moar later.

[?q]

Let's not forget walking to the dead end in Chapter 5 with three key blocks, running back to town, and talking to someone who tells you to grab a pencil and write down the combination 132...  221... 3212312312312312312312121213132121313121321321312121313121212131312121312312313212131213213213123131321212131313122312

That one also overlaps with his complaints of lazy puzzle design.

And now for a new obstacle:  The game's input interface! (5-1)

Please?

Please?

Please?

Please?

Or the fighting 20 pointless mooks comprising 90% of Chapter 6 (at least when SMRPG lacked a "real dungeon" for its 4th star, Star Hill was quick and painless and you could quickly move on to the awesome 5th chapter).

FWIW Ch. 6 was actually more interesting than at least half of the game the first time through when you thought that there was actually a time limit on what you were doing.  I think the "last part" of Ch. 6 was the second time I realized that this was supposed to be an entertaining game (the first time being 3-4).

There's also having to do the second Pit of 100 Trials twice for no reason other than because the designers said so, though that's a sidequest and a little harder to complain about as it's optional material.  Still, if they ran out of challenges, I'd rather they were honest and gave me my damn prize rather than telling me to do it again.  I got through that Pit and enjoyed its challenge, got to the end, was told to do it again, spent 5 minutes jumping around the empty room randomly looking for a hidden switch or for the mysterious voice from nowhere to say that patience was the real test or something, then I exited the dungeon was decided I was done with SPM's fake length bullshit.

The best part of the Pit of 100 Trials was the succession of enemies called Barribad and Sobarribad.  I hated Super Paper Mario, but I admit the names were funny.

What's terrible about the Shadoo fight at the end of the Pit of 100 Trials (round III) is that the same cheesy broken tricks you've been using to trivialize every fight in the game still work.  You can still flip, and only Dark Mario can do anything about it.  You can shrink with Dottie, and these Extra Bosses will go into Idle AI.  Seriously.  I don't regret having the infinite flip gauge for awesome game-skipping action for the rest of the game though.

Basically I use Super Paper Mario as the standard for bad video games, as in I rank games in badness based on how much they remind me of SPM.  But I'm not biased.  Or bitter.

[Suikama]

The entire premise of Kirby Air Ride is Here's a bunch of cool stuff; we didn't balance it much but it's like a giant sandbox so do whatever.

Bulk Star is unconditionally the slowest vehicle in the game.  Surprisingly given that it's a Legendary Air Ride Machine, Hydra isn't that far behind for the same reason.
Swerve Star will beat everything except Meta-Knight in any race that matters (which is fine by me since that's my favorite vehicle).
Meta-Knight is for all intents and purposes broken.  King DeDeDe, on the other hand, is capped at being mediocre in general.
NOVA help you if you play City Trial and wind up fighting DeDeDe.

Etc.  Balance was never a concern.

Metaknight has been a broken character in absolutely every game he's been in :V :V :V

[Garlyle]

I... don't agree with a lot of how this guy thinks, personally.

I mean, yeah, some of these things can be pretty bad - specifically, yes, a lot of the majority of the direct playability issues (Bad tutorials or non-existant in games that have really complex systems I'M LOOKING AT YOU VALKYRIE PROFILE 2 goddamn, and fuck Silent Hill 3's "Have a thurough knowledge of Shakespere and avian biology" hard puzzle setting seriously what the hell) are pretty agreeable.  But the moment it goes outside the realm of "this directly impacts the player's control", I really start to disagree hard.

For instance, things like "Moving Impossibly Large Chunks of Stone" might be slightly odd to the outsider, but what if that makes complete sense within the world it's in - even just to the gameplay instincts of the player?  Yeah, Zelda games do it a lot and it looks a bit ridiculous to actually stand back and analyze it - then you realise that these games are designed in such a way that the player instinctively knows what can and cannot be pushed or pulled around and that these are puzzle elements. A lot of his complaints seem to be similarly routed in the western developer mindset of "It has to make perfect sense", when I'm more for the mindset of "As long as it makes sense and is consistent within the game itself"

Similarly, letting people save anywhere has always been, to me, an excuse to either A) allow the difficulty to have stupid cheapshots and require perfectionism, or B) allow the player to savescum and essentially face zero risk.  Every single game I've played that allows that kills it for me - there's no fear of dying, I'll just reload back to thirty seconds ago and be fine.

And even some of the ones I'd mostly be willing to agree with normally (Such as "solve the room in 30 seconds or die") have simultaneously been pulled off awesomely in some games (The second to last chapter of Heavy Rain: Escape a burning building with a bomb that's going to go off once the flames reach it.  Giving you all the time in the world would've killed this scene; the panic element is awesome in it).  These aren't cases of "This is a bad thing to do" but rather "This can kill your game if you do it wrong", but that's hardly how he paints them.  Look at the amnesia and end-of-the-world complaints: These are his tastes at this point.  But you know what?  Trying to do the opposite can suck too, and executing these can be done incredibly.  These aren't legitimate 'bad design' to me, nor are they innately any better or worse off.  It's about how it's executed.

Although I'll give him that yes he points out some big difficulty issues - for the genres they're meant for at least - excepting difficulty levels.  I don't mind only one difficulty (I can tell you flat out it is far harder to judge multiple difficulty levels accurately in execution than just a single, not to mention the already-present gap between the creator and the player), and yeah, an easy mode that stays easy forever just seems like a copout in some way.  It's not "free pass through the game" difficulty, unless you deliberately label it as such.

Also: Fake Interaction is great if you know it's fake.  One of the reasons I'm excited to have Steambot Chronicles on the way?  Because I already know that all the dialogue choices I make aren't going to make a damn (Not even the one where I decide my main character's past, apparently), so I can just have fun with it.

[Ghaleon]

I haven't read any posts but the first so.. sorry if I reiterate something, but these are my own opinions and mine alone so.. well, yeah.

Bottom-Up Game Design

I haven't been a victim to this too much actually, except for SimTower apparently. Fact is I loved SimTower, and I never really played with the elevators too much. Granted, I felt that the NUMBER of elevators you COULD have was unneccesarily limited (that's probably related to this whole issue), but I felt like that didn't stop me from enjoying the game and doing relatively well at it ( with difficulty I'd reach 4 or barely 5 stars. but I was like 8 so  whatever).

Psychic AI

Ok seriously, duh? I mean honestly, do we really need a "professional" to tell us this is bad? Anyway, I can come up with a better example than Oblivion... Mortal combat.. You know, those CPUS that counter your uppercut by actually performing one of their OWN *BEFORE* the game actually animates your character with THEIR  uppercut AFTER you push the button? Yeah, that's pathetic. And yes, it's true, the game programming LITTERLLY goes:
*player pushes upptercut*
if(CPU isn't in mid air or doing something with an animation)
CPU->uppercut.
player->gets owned.

I mean seriously.
Another example is Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, the Snipers in many of the large outdoor area maps are often aiming straight at you..Before you're even in their line of sight. For example, if you use your force powers to look thru the walls, you can see them facing you clearly, with their guns pointing and everything, Even if they aren't Jedis themselves, awsome. It's relaly annoying as a player walking out of a doorway when BLAM you get shot by snipers instantly. Then you reload, and snipe them as soon as you come out, which is literally impossible without knowing about it in advance. Great.

Teleporting NPCs

Yeah it's annoying, but it's normally forgiveable because it prevents certain games (or certain parts of the game) from being absolutely trivially easy IMO.

Level Designs that Over- (or Under-) Use a Game Feature

Yeah this is boring. Basically, you unlock a new ability, and zomg, conveniently it's impossible to pass the next level without using this brand new ability 20 times per minute, isn't it amazing you never needed it once in the last 5 HOURS?
I also find it rather boring how it really is NEEDED. I mean new abilities are supposed to be cool, not virtual locks in a game that are unlocked with the push of a button. The player should be rewarded with the feeling that they owned or excelled at a particular part for using this new ability wisely instead of being told "USE IT HERE OR BE STUCK".

Moving Impossibly Large Chunks of Stone

This one gets me all the time actually. I think it was a Zelda game most recently actually. I recall thinking WTF DO I GO ZOMG.. Then I finally give in and use gamefaqs..Here's the kicker, most of the time they don't even specity because it's not even considered a puzzle, it's just move on. So sometimes you have to hunt for a youtube video, then you see it and think "WTF, you can push THAT". It really is stupid.

Huge Breasts and Other Juvenilia

Oh, I hate over sexualization more than most people, and not just in games. But pretty much everything, I'm actually unusual in that regard. But sometimes I hear people make fun of breast sizes when I really don't think they're quite over the top. I mean granted they might not be small, but they are often LESS exagerated than the bulging muscles found on the male equivilent characters IMO. For example, when I was playing world of warcraft, this other player online was making fun of how he thinks night elf females are nothing but stupid over sexualized dolls with *HUGE* breasts.. I replied "really? I didn't notice them being big".. So I actually took the time and effort to actually MEASURE them. Turns out they are the SMALLEST (given body size) for the alliance, not only that, but they are flat out smaller than many other breasts given to smaller creatures (including humans, who have wtfhuge breasts in that game).

Obviously, people just think that when something is considered attractive, and isn't flat chested, clearly it's due to exagerated breasts. Sorry, but no.
I don't know this football game so no comment.

Adolescent Armageddon

YES YES I TOTALLY AGREE.
I want a fantasy game or RPG where the stakes are nothing but politics, or whatever. Maybe one empire is at war with another, and you save your empire from...just another guy trying to take it over, not the world, not the universe, just protecting your damn country or whatever. That's still a noble cause ffs, wtf is up with these stupid overdone fantasies of saving the whole multiverse.. GAH.
I wouldn't judge a game as bad simply for doing it though. So it's really not THAT important, it's just something I'm tired of seeing.

Having to stand in (or select) exactly the right spot.

I don't think I can think of any examples that are really intentional or overlooked. But sometimes I play a game where something as simple as opening a door is really annoying because you have to approach it perfectly or whatever. Or maybe pushing blocks is hard because you have to be the perfect distance when you push button 'a' for you to actually push it.

Bad pathfinding.

Oh my god yes. Pathfinding isn't even that hard to do on a small scale. I honestly don't know how I'd approach it with thousands or hundreds of units for an RTS game or whatever (for efficiency's sake I mean), but sometimes I see it in a game where the number of units is really quite low. A game I wasn't really thinking was going to be worth my time (turns out I was right, it isn't) that came out recently: Disciples 3. Holy shit. it's  got SIX updates, and I STILL crashed the game before the end of my 2nd mission due to a pathfinding error.

During battle, I was fighting 5 wolves, and my own units were horribly outmatched (300 hp with 40 damage versus 400hp wolves with... 140 damage..yeah). So basically I found a way to bottleneck a narrow area, take turns, rotating my squires, healing them when they aren't closing the gap, fighting, etc. Turns out that the wolves who were not in combat, but were behind the bottleneck (who had no way to approach any of my units without their wolfie allies dying first) just kept thinking, and thinking, and thinking.. They didn't know what to do. The computer would NOT end its turn. so I push the "autocalculate battle" button... I see buttons flicker and flash as it proceeds to think and think... It basically froze (only it didn't, it was just thinking). HOLY FUCK.. 6 patches and they didn't figure out they need to tell the cpu what to do when IT HAS TO WAIT. aghahgag. To think the game was delayed TWO FUCKING YEARS for extended beta testing. holy shit faaaiiillll.

Low-poly trees (and other models, too).

Yes, sprites > low poly models. I absolutely hated the graphics in FF7. Graphics are NOT important to me, but when they are THAT ugly (Zun's art looks like a godsend in comparison FFS...and that's just one guy who can't draw, this is fucking square with millions of dollars and an entire art team!), it's just unforgiveable. I can't believe reviewers actually praised the graphics too? BIAS fanboyism much?

Too few audio clips for a given situation.

This is a huge problem for many low-budget RTS games. The lines people say are really annoying and tacky. It sounds like some kind of bad actor from a b-rated movie to boot. I mean I know people are gonna hate me for this, but one example is Dawn of War (yes I know it's not low budget). I just HATE playing as the eldar simply because the lines they say crank up the cheese factor WELL beyond "so bad it's good".

I also recall, like 15 years ago, seeing a kid play a game when the 3DO system was brand new at some movie store (ok maybe not 15 years ago, quite awhile). I think the game was "space hulk". Anyway, every 3 seconds, I'd hear "Did you hear that?!" "Did you hear that?!", "did you hear that?!".. It was supposed to be a scary game, but it turned out being a riot because that's all I heard over and over.

Birds that carry swords.

I think this is forgivable. Generally when games have enemies that only drop items  that they carry..It really doesn't add much to the game aside from bragging rights. I have no more fun playing Titan quest (which I love btw) due to enemies only dropping what they wear, than diablo where a rat can drop a legendary great axe. This is one of those times where realism is NOT needed.

I'll post more but it's late... another time.

[Ghaleon]

On phone can't edit, I just want to clarify my beef with the block issue. No I don't have a problem with link pushing blocks 4 times his body size, or uprooting plants. The block that I mentioned was an exceptional case that does NOT share the same model as what you lift and push for the rest of the series... As is every case like this. The mentality of what you can push, pull or lift in a game is defined in game. But sometimes a game has an outstanding exception which catches you off guard.

[Iryan]

I was a little surprised by the notion that bottom-up game design was bad by default, but then I realized that not only was he thinking on a much larger scale, but I also had the definition reverse because of reading MtG columns back in the day.  :derp:

For me, bottom-up means starting by designing an element gameplay wise first and then deciding what it actually is supposed to be in the given game. Top-down means trying to take a story concept or "flavour" idea and crafting gameplay to suit this flavor instead of making gameplay first and then giving it a suiting flavor. For example, Freeze Sign "Perfect Freeze" is with 99% certainty bottom-up spell card design. You take the idea "This character has ice powers, so this should be reflected mechanically in gameplay" and try to craft gameplay from this idea. BoLaD would be very much bottom-up; just make an epic danmaku pattern and then give it a suitably epic name that fits the character somehow. Apart from the difficulty (in comparison to the rest of the battle), the attack has not much to do with life and death, or borders for that matter.

Granted, after this definition the majority of danmaku is bottom-up, I believe. But occasionally you will see something that is great because both its flavor and gameplay aspects compliment each other so well.

[Garlyle]

I was a little surprised by the notion that bottom-up game design was bad by default, but then I realized that not only was he thinking on a much larger scale, but I also had the definition reverse because of reading MtG columns back in the day.  :derp:

Yeah, I was expecting something different too.  His issue is more with building a game overtop of something that wasn't designed to be a game initially.  On a technical level, of course, but this might explain why movie-inspired games tend to be so...

[stands2reason]

No on-demand saving

This one's been an annoyance plenty of times over the years. Nothing like needing to step away from the game for a while and being 10-15 minutes away from the nearest check point. Or God forbid, you're on battery power with no external power source nearby.

Or how about only being able to save (except for when you achieve some particular event) to a temporary save when you quit  that is deleted upon loading. As in, you never have a recent save while you're playing.  Because power outages don't happen, uninterruptible power supplies and other batteries don't fail, cables don't get unplugged by accident, and your code is 100% perfect Mr. Game Designer.

Bad pathfinding.

Overally, possibly the most annoying thing in gaming. Especially if it's combined with dumb AI as part of escort mini-game/mission. (horrific flashbacks of Dead Rising come to mind; and I'm not talking about the zombies either)

Huge Breasts and Other Juvenilia

 Nothing like a fun game that  you can't play in front of anyone else without embarrasing yourself. Luckily, this hasn't been an issue with too many recent games I'ev been playing...

[?q]

Metaknight has been a broken character in absolutely every game he's been in :V :V :V

...you actually have a good point here.

[Firestorm29]

I know a game I like to play called Metal Fatigue which has a few things that really bug the hell out of me. It does have some nasty pathfinding at times. Also, I'd say for the variety of 20 units to a side, you get one of 3 general random noises. Then there's the problem that for multiplayer, it sets a unit limit, but that unit limit applies to all players, and all queues go first come, first serve. My step-bro I would say exploited this by hiding in the ground layer which has very limited access, building a swarm of artillery that has splash damage, and having over 20 factories to have the next 200 queue requests to him.

It's a game with a really neat build your own giant robot gimmick and plays on three maps on the same time, but you can really tell it was rushed out. Sony bought the company about a month or so after release. :/

I think I might list others later.

[Tamer Anode/Cathode]

There's quite a bit here I agree with heavily and quite a bit here I disagree with.

Bad Translation and Localization - "What a polite young man she was!"

Mocking the Player - when it's blatantly mean-spirited, yeah, then don't do it. However, things like YOU ARE DEAD and the game overs in some old Sierra adventure games do a good job of laughing with the player, not at them.

Time-constrained Demos - I'm going to agree with this writer that the Id Software model for demos was perfect.

Games That Run Too Fast - I see this problem with a lot of old MS-DOS games. I'm going to give credit to whoever programmed the original Alley Cat here; that game features an internal clock so it always runs at the same speed regardless of processor.

Poor Acting - a LOT has improved in this regard from what I can tell. I don't think I've ever experienced a game with entirely terrible acting, voice or otherwise.

[trancehime]

Poor Acting - a LOT has improved in this regard from what I can tell. I don't think I've ever experienced a game with entirely terrible acting, voice or otherwise.

Tell me, good friend.

Have you ever heard the English voice acting from Chaos Wars? If you haven't, well... let's just say you should if you want to know what TRULY bad voice acting is.

[Tamer Anode/Cathode]

Tell me, good friend.

Have you ever heard the English voice acting from Chaos Wars? If you haven't, well... let's just say you should if you want to know what TRULY bad voice acting is.

Well, when I said "experienced", I meant "played personally". A lot of the what I've played tends not to have voice acting, but I am well aware of the infamous Chaos Wars dub (and additionally, Megaman X7. BURN TO THE GROUND).

[Iryan]

Well, there is a reason I play the Orange Box games in English and not in German.
Well, I played through portal with both, and while the acting (and translation) is not exactly bad, it is highly inferior to the original.
Team Fortress 2 as well; where the original has incredibly distinct hilarious voices for every character, the German ones sound way too similar to one another, methinks. There is no Australian/Texan/Scottish/Boston accent in the German language, afterall.


Then again, even if the foreign dialogue and voice acting was truly great, it would still have a hard time to be as good as in the originals. They are just that good.  :derp:

[Paul Debrion]

I agree with most of his points to some extent and I don't think he's outright "wrong" on anything. A few of them were bit narrow minded and can't really be applied to some games, but that has more to do with what wasn't written about rather than what was written about and having to explain how each can apply to various genres and games would be asking far too much.

Honestly, I don't have that  much to add.
The thing is I like to think more about what could be done rather than what shouldn't be done, and tend leave the latter to other people.  :V

[Azure Lazuline]

One thing that I'd like to add to the list is unwinnable situations - times when you're still in control and can survive for as long as you want, but can't progress until you die (or worse, restart your save). One example here is Resident Evil: if you use too much ammo or health and then you save afterwards, that save file is useless. You can't beat the game without starting over. Of course, Resident Evil games aren't all that long if you know what you're doing, and I can't think of a way to remove that effect while keeping the same sense of horror, so I excuse it in that case.

What I can't excuse is that stupid wall boss in Mega Man 2. Don't enter the room with full Crash Bombs? Too bad. Kill yourself so you can leave the room, then either grind for ammo or kill yourself a few more times to get a game over (which gives you full ammo). Enter the room fully prepared, but miss too many shots? Too bad. Kill yourself, replenish your ammo, and try again. As much as I love that game, it has some horrible design at some parts.

Of course, this isn't the only example of it, but it's the only one that immediately comes to mind, aside from glitches that can render your save file unwinnable. It's bad if they don't fix a glitch, but it's worse if they know you can get stuck but leave it in anyway for "challenge."

[Firestorm29]

Battlezone 2 (PC) has some horrible campaign design, to the point where the playerbase strongly to just ignore it. I haven't played it in years, but I do remember one mission that can help explain why:

Many of the stages I'd say don't have objectives that's hard, it's just if you don't play by their script, you WILL fail. Like for instance, there's a mission where that take place where you have to rescue your fellow officer that got hurt in the last mission. You get all sort of nice toys to play with and you're first though would probably see what all this new tech does. You'll fail within five minutes for not just leading the army they start you with into the enemy base you went by in the last mission (doesn't help the map is actually NOT the same from the last mission, it's atleast rotated by 90 degrees.). You might as well be prepared to fail a few more times as you try to learn to use the APCs and scout out the best attack angle for them. Oh, didn't use a Tug to secure something that was in the enemy base before going to rescue your comrad? Fail. Didn't get to your friend fast enough to beat the arbitrary time limit? Fail. Do that about 20 times or so you about got the BZ2 single player campaign.

It's got a pretty nice story, but it doesn't get interesting until like the last 5 or so missions, with the same demands to follow the dev's scripts most of the time. I can understand a mission or two having something like that, but most of them requiring you to just what the designers wanted you to do lest fail in some form?

At least they added in instant action mode so you could sandbox alittle and see how to use different units and toy around with what works for you.

[JT]

"Huge breasts and other juvenilia?" "Mocking the player?" "Pointless surrealism?" Pull that stick out of your butt, gramps.

Tell me, good friend.

Have you ever heard the English voice acting from Chaos Wars? If you haven't, well... let's just say you should if you want to know what TRULY bad voice acting is.

ffffffffff

[Lloyd Dunamis]

Haven't read the rest of the forum yet for my opinions to be... uhh, uninfluenced somehow.

First off, "Wow, I'm reading game design articles written since 1998!"

Games Without Maps
>Was about to comment about it until he mentioned "There?s no reason for withholding a map from me unless it?s just to slow me down", so I'm with good terms with that.

Puzzles Permitting No Lateral Thinking At All
>A little against the "an obstacle which can only be overcome in one way".
Story-wise, there could be only the few ways that the character could think of upon encounter of the obstacle -- somewhat similar to what we urge to do when one is desperate, whick blocks his brain process access to other "calm" options.
... It depends on the flow of the game though, and sometimes having other options is, well, inappropriate.
Of course, abuse is definitely a no-no.

Poor Acting
>includes voice acting, right? Unless the lazy voice/acting is done on purpose (say, an innately lazy character or something), I definitely agree with this point.

Games That Run Too Fast
>*nod nod* It's one of the things I'll look out for if I ever start designing games myself |3 *wishy washy*

No On-Demand Save Game and/or No Pause Game
>Definitely agree about the No Pause (course, a few rhythm games and multiplayer modes excluded), disagree about the No On-Demand Save.
-No Pause Game: You gotta be sure no one needs your attention when playing such games, but that doesn't happen all the time.
Some game battles are already set for "multiplayer"/-ish environment *coughgodeatercough*, but I think that is not a sound reason not to have a pause when you're playing alone, right? Then there're the few games that could have had black-screened or pause-delayed pause instead of no pause at all *coughklonoabeachvolleycough*.
Patapon? Hnnn.........
-No On-Demand Save: it could be some sort of challenge, unless the mistake was because of a programming hiccup, I guess (i.e. crappy, and I mean crappy physics in a few action games). Though if the mistake doesn't happen too often, that frustration is just plain stubborness, I think.
Then there's temporary save, like stands2reason mentioned.
I also ride Garlyle's thought on this one.

Side Notes

• "I play games of medieval adventure and heroism to slay princesses and rescue dragons."... Did I read that right, or was there supposed to be a hidden meaning?
• The "You Have 30 Seconds to Figure Out This Level Before You Die" section just reminded me of that VR training where you're given 15 minutes to solve a murder case of some sort in an office room. xD
• From my understanding, Deadlocks could be the cause of hang-ups in-game (i.e. not being able to move your character even when you can pause the game, access menu, etc, or nothing at all). Is that sound?

[Paul Debrion]

It's important to remember that pretty much any "rule" you can apply to something like video games is going to have exceptions.

Take Uplink for example.
Uplink saves your game automatically, does not let you save on demand, automatically deletes your save game upon losing, and allows you to run yourself into unwinnable situations and not even know it. However, there's just no way saving on demand or removing unwinnable situations would work well in Uplink, as a lot of the fun of the game would be utterly destroyed.
There is a work around that allows you to keep saved files, but as far as I know very few people are able to enjoy the game using it and most will stop using it after realizing they've pretty much removed the fun from the game.

This doesn't necessarily make it wrong to criticize games for not having saving on demand and it doesn't make him wrong to consider it bad design, it really is frustrating for the vast majority of games and I almost always prefer to have saving on demand rather than not have it. It just illustrates that just like any art form of entertainment medium, there is rarely any such thing as rules that are truly universal, as there is always going to be some work somewhere out there that would be an exception.

[Azure Lazuline]

I think "always have saving on demand" can be safely replaced by "don't make the player re-do long sections that they already cleared." That still has exceptions, but it's a much better rule to go by.