Things That Bother You About Gaming

[Foggle]

Honestly, I wish they would stop with the gunplay and just make a straight on platformer.

That's what All 4 One is. It sucks balls and is by far the worst entry in the series... though that's mainly because it's a completely different style of platformer from the previous games and is focused on co-op.

The problem with the newer Ratchet games is that they don't understand what made Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal the masterpieces that they were and have reverted to the design of the first game instead. Whereas the first game's progression was platforming->shooting->platforming->shooting, GC and UYA featured (outside of the arenas) both elements simultaneously, and perhaps the tightest controls to ever grace a 3D platformer. The PS3 controls were ruined when Sony decided to put the absolute flimsiest triggers of all time on the DualShock 3 instead of proper L2 and R2 buttons, and the actual game design was dumbed-down because Insomniac apparently forgot how to make a platformer/shooter and went back to the progression style of the original game. This is most clearly evident in Quest For Booty, in which the first half of the game features no shooting whatsoever and the second half of the game features no platforming whatsoever.

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy Ratchet 1, Deadlocked, Tools of Destruction, and A Crack In Time, but they will never match the greatness of Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal, which are my favorite 3D platformers of all time.

[gunswordfist]

So if anyone has been keeping up with their Sony news, the Last Guardian is currently in limbo, Ueda has left Sony, and it looks like the game might not even release this gen. Other than Naughty Dog, Sony's studios haven't been doing all that hot this gen sales or profit-wise, anyway.

I really hope Overstrike is successful, for Insomniac's sake.

I thought Ueda was still overseeing the project even though he's leaving? Either way, I still have faith in PS3's first party.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Honestly, I wish they would stop with the gunplay and just make a straight on platformer.

That's what All 4 One is. It sucks balls and is by far the worst entry in the series... though that's mainly because it's a completely different style of platformer from the previous games and is focused on co-op.

The problem with the newer Ratchet games is that they don't understand what made Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal the masterpieces that they were and have reverted to the design of the first game instead. Whereas the first game's progression was platforming->shooting->platforming->shooting, GC and UYA featured (outside of the arenas) both elements simultaneously, and perhaps the tightest controls to ever grace a 3D platformer. The PS3 controls were ruined when Sony decided to put the absolute flimsiest triggers of all time on the DualShock 3 instead of proper L2 and R2 buttons, and the actual game design was dumbed-down because Insomniac apparently forgot how to make a platformer/shooter and went back to the progression style of the original game. This is most clearly evident in Quest For Booty, in which the first half of the game features no shooting whatsoever and the second half of the game features no platforming whatsoever.

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy Ratchet 1, Deadlocked, Tools of Destruction, and A Crack In Time, but they will never match the greatness of Going Commando and Up Your Arsenal, which are my favorite 3D platformers of all time.

I'm hoping for a Ratchet Collection to try those two other games, because I really didn't enjoy Ratchet 1 all that much, as you know. If the games are as better designed as you say they are, then I'll probably enjoy them.

So if anyone has been keeping up with their Sony news, the Last Guardian is currently in limbo, Ueda has left Sony, and it looks like the game might not even release this gen. Other than Naughty Dog, Sony's studios haven't been doing all that hot this gen sales or profit-wise, anyway.

I really hope Overstrike is successful, for Insomniac's sake.

I thought Ueda was still overseeing the project even though he's leaving? Either way, I still have faith in PS3's first party.

Nope, he's gone.

[Foggle]

The addition of strafing to the Ratchet sequels makes the shooting much easier and more fun.

[Foggle]

Worst. List. Ever.

To quote myself from the comments section,
Portal 1 above 2
Call of Duty everywhere
Mass Effect 2's idiotic non-ending
Sonic and Mario games
Fallout 3
Pokemon
HEAVY FUCKING RAIN

Horrific list is utterly horrific. I don't think I've ever seen a worse list involving video games in my life. I'd hate to see a top 100 list by these clowns; Borderlands and Far Cry 2 would probably be on there.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Who could ever justify Portal 1 over 2 in anything?

As for the best ending ever to a game? I'd say that Mega Man X1 did it really well. You saved the world, but it cost you dearly, and it almost makes you wonder if it was all worth it since you are basically the only one left (or so it feels like when you first play it without any background knowledge) to fight the bad guys. Zero 1 kind of did a flip on this kind of ending and the X1 remake was pretty good about it, but the original X makes it very straightforward and yet vague about your victory. It's simple and sweet, and I like that.

[Daxdiv]

I liked the ending to Pok?mon Black and White. It was pretty different than what you would expect from the last 4 generations. Loved the twist near the end of the Elite Four challenge where instead of fighting the champion, N just spawns a castle since he just steamrolled him, and you learn a little bit more about him if you explore the castle, you catch the legendary, you fight N, he realizes that Ghetsis has been using him to fufill his own needs, then you fight him, N then parts way with the Dragon he caught realizing the error of his way.

[gunswordfist]

Did Prince Of Persia 2008 get a mention....who am I kidding..

[Spark Of Spirit]

"What makes this game difficult is that you can't save whenever you want."No, what makes the game hard is the game.

This isn't so much a bad review as a... "confused review". It would be like me reviewing an FPS and complaining that ammo is scarce and requires me to play smart. How is that a fault of the game? Sometimes it seems like these reviewers have to find complaints because they have to have them, even if they don't know what they are in order to have "cred" or something.

But the cake has to be him complaining at how basic the gameplay is. Since when is a lack of minigames, driving levels, or collecting random items a bad thing in a platformer? The game is pure 100% action, which is why it works so well.

Other than the graphics not being all that great for a PS2 game at the time (the art style saves it, though) and how weird some upgrades are, it seems like a stretch to complain about anything here. It does exactly what it sets out to do. You either like what it does or you don't. That doesn't mean what it does is bad.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I have a huge problem with most game reviewers in general. Basically I get the feeling that most of them just find stuff to nitpick and complain about for the sake of complaining. I can understand point out huge flaws in a game, but more often than not the average Gamespot or IGN review will knock games down for the most trivial of issues, yet there are some bigger-budget games that get to slide off easy while having obvious gaping flaws in their core gameplay. Reviews for games can be extremely biased, and to be honest that makes sense because games just like any other medium of entertainment can many times be very subjective to the player as to how good it is. What ticks me off more than anything else is when reviewers talk like their opinion is fact, as if everyone should agree with them. SO many video game journalists seem to review games this way. However, I have seen many cases in which they can underscore games because they clearly don't understand how to play them properly (very much like with IGN's review of God Hand, among other things), but in other cases they will overrate the hell out of games just because they have some impressive looking visuals for their time (SO many reviewers did this with Assassin's Creed, and that is in fact the very game that got me to realize how full of crap most game journalists are).

As for me, I'll just stick with my own opinion on games, but if I ever want a recommendation I'll usually just ask one of you guys since I know that you guys have close enough tastes to what I like, and when people like you and me play games, we play them to have fun....because they are GAMES. I don't know what the various nitpicky reviewers play games for, but its clearly not to just have some fun.

[gunswordfist]

I never like it when reviewers say a game is too hard.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I just hate the idea of marking down hard games because they were made to be hard. The game was intended to be a 3D version of a classic arcade style platformer. Does it succeed in that? Does what it tries to do work (convenience is not a positive or a negative, at worse it's a gripe at best it's a frivolity)? How is different from those games/the same? What does it do different than other games? Those are questions to answer.

Is the game good? That's a whole other kettle of fish. None of the above have anything to do with if the game is actually good or not. It just has to do with the type of game they're making.

I'm not going to mark down an RPG for not having QTEs or rhythm-based minigames, I'm going to mark it down if it fails as an RPG.

[gunswordfist]

Makes sense. The only game I liked less for "being too hard" is Streets Of Rage 3. On the other hand, Contra Hard Corps is much harder but there's more incentive to come back and try again in that game so it wasn't all just the difficulty for me.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Its OK to mark down a game for difficulty if its difficult due to unfair level or enemy design, or other hindrances that lead to cheap deaths, like a terrible camera (and I mean worse than NG's camera, because that isn't nearly as awful as most people make it out to be), bad controls, and other stuff that leads to the difficulty being more frustrating than a fun challenge. That said, if a game is made to be intentionally hard but remains to be fair and has a learning curve which allows the difficulty to be overcome through practice and acquiring skill and using strategy, and it gets marked down for that, then the reviewer clearly doesn't know what they are talking about, or what type of game they THINK its supposed to be.

To be specific, games like Battletoads or Sonic '06 can be marked down for their difficulty, because in one case the game is just made so masochistically hard that it ceases to be any fun to play at all, whereas in the other respective case the game is clearly unfinished and was rushed out the door and is full of abysmal flaws that just lead to many unfair deaths. Those games can be criticized for their difficulty because they are difficult for the wrong reasons or completely unintentional reasons.

On the other hand, games like Ninja Gaiden Black and Devil May Cry 3 should not be marked down for their difficulties. They are both throw-backs to old-school arcade-style action games and have steep learning curves and are meant to be challenging, but they are also completely fair and any skilled player in either game can make it through the hardest difficulty of either game and barely get touched, proving that there is little to no factor of cheapness in their difficulty. Stuff like God Hand falls into this category as well. While I've heard from fans that its not exactly perfectly balanced, anyone who has played it and beat it will testify to it being 99% fair and being mostly about skill and learning how to properly utilize the combat system. If a reviewer gives it a bad review because they don't understand that, then they shouldn't be playing those types of games in the first place.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Yeah, there's "hard" and then there's "good luck getting through because we never tested this", though that's more a fault of the individual game than the genre.

Sort of like people who down rate shmups because they can "finish" them in 15 minutes. When that's not really the point of those games.