The Hot Topic

[Sly Reflex 1,700]

Click the latest hot topic and get in on the discussion.

Bad parts in games you loved. 23/01/12

Your top 3 games of 2011. 30/01/12

Gaming mistakes and calamities. 06/02/2012

Financing games you'd like to see made. 13/02/2012

Vita. Are you getting one? 20/02/2012

Game playing census. 27/02/2012

GAME over? 05/03/12

The best stories and voice overs. 12/03/12

Frequency of sequels. 19/03/12

Best game endings 30/4/12

Controversial opinions 02/5/12

Memories 04/05/12

Favourite recommendations 08/05/12

Favourite consoles and rivalries 16/05/12

Game questions 20/05/12

Impulse purchases 21/05/12

Playing games wrong 25/05/12

Favourite game developers 02/06/12

You review! 03/06/12

E3 and all that 07/06/12

Your favourite E3 game 14/06/12

Nintendo's E3 and prospective future 18/06/12

Best indie games 25/06/12

Half year review on what mattered most to you 03/07/12

Games only you liked 09/07/12

DLC debate 16/07/12

Battlefield 4 thoughts 23/07/12

Living in a game 30/07/12

The Olympics 06/08/12

No longer a fan of... 13/08/12

Lapsed gaming 20/08/12

Missed gaming 28/08/12

Future gen forecast 03/09/12

Delete a game 10/09/12

Are you getting a WiiU? 17/09/12

Buying games 24/09/12

Best and worst stories 01/10/12

Resident Evil 6 thoughts 08/10/12

Best game intros 15/10/12

Christmas games 22/10/12

Getting stuck 05/11/12

Star Wars and all that stuff 11/11/12

Ladies in games 21/11/12

Game films 30/11/12

Video game memorabilia 06/12/12

Wii U verdict 13/12/12

Making multiplayer 18/12/12

Worst of 2012 26/12/12

2013 08/01/13

Retro Playstation 2 14/01/13

Converting non gamers 24/02/12

Readers top 20 01/03/13

Classic videogame soundtracks 18/03/13

Gaming's best love stories 20/03/13

Bungie's Destiny 25/03/13

Playstaion 4 reaction 26/03/13

Achievements and trophies 29/03/13

Tomb Raider and reboots 04/04/13

Sim City and always online games 10/04/13

Your first ever videogame 24/04/13

A sequel too far? 29/04/13

Your favourite bad games 06/05/13

Next gen hardware 11/05/13

Favourite sound effects 21/05/13

Dream reboot 03/06/13

Best game secrets 05/06/13

Gamings most embarrassing moments 08/06/13

Nobody ever reads or uses this bit I am sure, so have a picture of Jane McDonald.

[Sly Reflex 1,700]

So I used to do this on another forum, and sometimes it did well, and other times it didn't. I'm hoping here it will take root and be all cool and shit. Ya'll dig? If there's any questions that don't really apply to us I'm make one up to cover it.

First question of the topic.

For this week's discussion we want to know what your least favourite bit is in a game you otherwise really enjoyed.

It doesn't have to be a game-ruining problem but what niggles, flaws or unwanted features annoy you in some of your favourite games? Is it a particular level, an ability you can never get the hang of - or a missing feature that seems obvious to you but that the game doesn't have? Is it a problem with checkpointing or saving perhaps? Or the difficulty level in general? Maybe a graphical issue or some other technical problem?

How much did the issue affect your enjoyment of the game? In general does a game have to be near perfect for you to enjoy it or are you happy to put up with a bunch of poorly implemented features if the core experience is enjoyable?

[Sly Reflex 1,700]

I guess I'll go first then.

I'm going to say most shooters that have vehicle sections in them. They are normally proper shit, even the ones that are ok tend to spoil the game a bit. The most notable ones are the bits in the Gears series where you have to command a vehicle. They are just clumsy man. I hated outrunning the Kyrll. So pointless. Also, driving across the ice sheets and doing vehicle combat in Gow2 also sucked a fat one. Shooting game engines are not very good at doing that, I wish they wouldn't do it at all. The hovercraft sections of Army of Two were equally as shit. I have no idea why devs feel the need to put these sections into their games, as I don't know anyone who looks forward to playing them.

[spatular 282]

i sort of hate banshees and rolling (in combination with sword/shotgun) in halo. obviously i still play it all the time so these things don't spoil my enjoyment too much. they aren't that badly implemented either, it's quite easy to take a banshee out with some teamwork, and rolling is limited, it's just sometimes when things aren't going well and these things keep killing me i get pretty angry new fangled wall textures in recent halo games - grenades bounce more realistically but that makes it hard to do some cool grenade throws which is a shame. oh and spawn camping in any shooter.

i play a lot (well not that much recently) of 2d shooters - and ones that put you back to a checkpoint with vastly reduced firepower can be infuriating, i mean i died when i had all thoes cool guns and now i'm supposed to do it with a pea shooter? great. i think that's a terrible feature and i don't really understand why any game has it.

the bosses in deus ex 3 is an obvious one. they should have been a lot better but don't come close to spoiling the game for me.

[radiofloyd 849]

The ocean temple with the boring stealth bits in Phantom Hourglass that you had to keep revisiting - spoiled an otherwise excellent game.

Scanning planets for minerals in Mass Effect 2 - should never have been included in the game.

I'm sure there are loads more...

[illdog 1,810]

I hate bad checkpoints in general, they've fucked up a million games ive enjoyed. Ones that make you do dull, repetitive action before you get to the bit that’s giving you grief. Scarygirl has a checkpoint before the forth level boss that makes you swim downward for 15 seconds with no enemies or obstacles before you get back to the fight again. 15 seconds isn’t long, I know, but its pointless. Why not have the checkpoint when you hit the bottom, then 2 seconds to the right is the boss fight?

[Sambob 615]

One thing that used to really get my goat was Game Over screens, they still annoy me a bit, but it used to be:

Annoying as fuck bit of music

wait for ages

character doing a fucking irritating face or animation

GAME OVER

pause for what seems like an hour

okay you can play again now, but dont forget that you are a cunt for dying

I can still remember the mario 64 game over screen, it was normally preceded by mario fucking leaping around like a cunt on lava whilst he cooks his arse 'tssssssss....ahahahah.....tsssssss.....ahahahaha..GET OFF THE FUCKING LAVA YOU CUNT ......tssssss - dead - game over.

[DifferentClass 1,440]

I love the Persona games to death but the instant kill moves in battle can fuck right off.

The problem with them is if the enemy uses it on one of your party it's not a problem, as you can use a resurection ability or item to get them back into battle whenever you want. The fucking stupid thing is though if the enemy uses it on your character it's game over... your allies can't revive you. When that move gets used on you you're just praying that it doesn't hit as they usually have a 50/50 hit ratio.

[Hendo 1,500]

Great topic, Sly.

But I can't add much more after this:

The ocean temple with the boring stealth bits in Phantom Hourglass that you had to keep revisiting - spoiled an otherwise excellent game.

Scanning planets for minerals in Mass Effect 2 - should never have been included in the game.

I'm sure there are loads more...

Two of the worst offenders in my opinion. I could take the scanning because the rest was so great but the recurring temple in Phantom Hourglass sucked some serious bum.

[DifferentClass 1,440]

I know the palnet scanning is shit in ME2 but you don't need that much materials to get everything you need. Just concentrate on the 'rich' planets and you are sorted. It's only if you're a completionist do you need to do a load of scanning.

And I can't beleive no-one has mentioned the Dead Space asteroid shooty bit. That was needless, hard and sucked. (add wife joke)

[Craymen Edge 808]

The planet scanning wasn't even the dumbest thing in the Mass Effect 2 galaxy map. That would be the need to buy fuel and probes at stations and "drive" your ship between planets.

[shaolin_monkey 57]

I quite liked the planet scanning. I got quite OCD about it.

The things I don't like about great games, particularly on the PC and Xbox, is where you've spent hours negotiating a seriously tricky area, putting sweat, thumb blisters and 100% concentration in, finally, FINALLY, achieving your aim, making you punch the air in victory and then... And then...

...it crashes. And you haven't saved. And you can't bear the thought of having to go through all that a second time.

Fallout 3, I'm looking at you, although you're far from the only antagonist in this evil plot to to try and force me away from gaming.

[Sly Reflex 1,700]

The planet scanning wasn't even the dumbest thing in the Mass Effect 2 galaxy map. That would be the need to buy fuel and probes at stations and "drive" your ship between planets.

Fucking this. They went out of there way to make an excellent game, and then they put this in. Absolutely horrible.

A dumb decision I hated was in Bad Company 2. Giving Recon's the ability to get more points from a headshot based on the distance they were from the kill was so fucking dumb. The game would start and you'd get people going backwards away from the objective instead of towards it.

[Hendo 1,500]

I quite liked the planet scanning. I got quite OCD about it.

Oh don't get me wrong, I was completely OCD mental with it but I hated myself for doing it.

As Dark Souls is currently being attempted, I would say the odd take on co-op. I understand it as a design decision but it still hurts.

For those who don't know - you can't invite someone into your game or someone join you from the dashboard/XMB, if a random and you decide to use the Xbox party system the game will reset back to the main menu and opening up your game to let people help you out may have unforseen consequences when one of the high level players looking for PvP comes bounding in as a demon and will destroy you.

And you thought the Fable II co-op was bad.

[Nag 1,927]

Single player games adding multiplayer, because it'll sell more copies.... yeah, right.

Even if its done right do story driven games like Dead Space 2, Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 3 really need multiplayer modes tacked on?. Gets on my tits to be honest because most of the time it is'nt done right anyway, my god Bioshock 2's was fucking awful.

[radiofloyd 849]

I quite liked the planet scanning. I got quite OCD about it.

Oh don't get me wrong, I was completely OCD mental with it but I hated myself for doing it.

As Dark Souls is currently being attempted, I would say the odd take on co-op. I understand it as a design decision but it still hurts.

For those who don't know - you can't invite someone into your game or someone join you from the dashboard/XMB, if a random and you decide to use the Xbox party system the game will reset back to the main menu and opening up your game to let people help you out may have unforseen consequences when one of the high level players looking for PvP comes bounding in as a demon and will destroy you.

And you thought the Fable II co-op was bad.

The decision to not allow co-op with or against friends is questionable, but you can see the reasoning behind it.

I'm not sure how invasions work but i know you can only be summoned by players withn +/-10 levels of you, i assumed it was the same for invasions.

The co-op and pvp itself though is brilliant. I think so anyway!

[Sly Reflex 1,700]

Single player games adding multiplayer, because it'll sell more copies.... yeah, right.

Even if its done right do story driven games like Dead Space 2, Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 3 really need multiplayer modes tacked on?. Gets on my tits to be honest because most of the time it is'nt done right anyway, my god Bioshock 2's was fucking awful.

I know a lot of people that stuck around for Bioshock 2's MP. It wasn't going to knock the top dogs off their perch, but it was a mild diversion for those. Could say the same for the Transformers game too, I know a few people that spent ages playing that.

[Nag 1,927]

Single player games adding multiplayer, because it'll sell more copies.... yeah, right.

Even if its done right do story driven games like Dead Space 2, Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 3 really need multiplayer modes tacked on?. Gets on my tits to be honest because most of the time it is'nt done right anyway, my god Bioshock 2's was fucking awful.

I know a lot of people that stuck around for Boishock 2's MP. It wasn't going to knock the top dogs off their perch, but it was a mild diversion for those. Could say the same for the Transformers game too, I know a few people that spent ages playing that.

Its fucking Transformers, man.... just you wait until Fall of Cybertron drops.

[Sly Reflex 1,700]

I'm going to throw the navigation system in from Dead Island. It's horrendous. It sends you all over the bloody place. On numerous occasions I've said to Mika "Where the hell are you going?" and he's said "I'm following the navigation system." That's funny because I am too, and it's pointing us in completely different directions. It wouldn't be the first time it's walked us all the way around a block only to bring us out where we arrived. It's pretty annoying when it takes you the long way around instead of giving you the most direct route. We did a quest last session where we had to turn these loud speakers on. It took us all the way down the sea front and back up to the other side of the bridge, the bridge we were fucking stood on before the walkabout started. Estimated time? About 5 minutes with all the fighting. Would have taken 30 seconds to cross the bridge though if the fucking thing worked right.

[Sly Reflex 1,700]

This is what they said regarding the question.

Part 1.

Part 2.

This hot topic is now closed. When the new one goes up I'll bang it up in here for discussions and stuff.