Best examples of "What were they thinking?!" in gaming

[Soniman]

'06 has been mentioned enough as has ShTH. Werehog IS NOT A "WTF were they thinking!?" thing to me regarding the concept of it. If the Werehog is guilty of being some odd idea that has no relevance to the accepted 'standard' for Sonic gameplay and is a bizarre concept as an alternate form of Sonic regarding how it came about and what it can do then Sonic's nine forms in Colours are absolutely guilty of the same 'crime'.

 

It's something called execution. Despite how you felt about it, the Werehog to many people was slow, repetitive, monotonous, and dragged on for far to long and the issues where accentuated when directly compared to the high speed part of the game, not to mention the concept in itself was just bizarre to begin with. You can't even compare Sonic's wisp forms in that sense since they play no major role in the story (Sonic won't have an existential crisis on why his Rocket form has no arms or whatever) and they pretty much only existed to give the power-up sequence more pizazz, compounded with the general view that the Wisps were fun to use and added more to the game and you have most preferring it over the Werehog, despite conceptually being the same thing.

[KHCast]

Oh what about that 50 cent video game? That seemed like a pretty random ass idea that sucked.

[Diogenes]

Oh what about that 50 cent video game? That seemed like a pretty random ass idea that sucked.

I watched an LP of it and from that perspective it was great.

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

It's something called execution. Despite how you felt about it, the Werehog to many people was slow, repetitive, monotonous, and dragged on for far to long and the issues where accentuated when directly compared to the high speed part of the game, not to mention the concept in itself was just bizarre to begin with. You can't even compare Sonic's wisp forms in that sense since they play no major role in the story (Sonic won't have an existential crisis on why his Rocket form has no arms or whatever) and they pretty much only existed to give the power-up sequence more pizazz, compounded with the general view that the Wisps were fun to use and added more to the game and you have most preferring it over the Werehog, despite conceptually being the same thing.

I would say they poorly converted ristar game, that then had a mutated sonic skin thrown on

[Vertekins]

Two entire divisions of Sega didn't go to Sonic Team and say "Hey, these Wisps are kinda dumb, ya know?;" and despite the "Sonic Mario Galaxy" jokes nothing in Colors was anywhere near as transparently derivative and pandering as the Werehog (or ShtH) was.

 

Werehog wasn't pandering to anyone or anything. Hashimoto saw it necessary to expand upon the game by including another form that focuses on a different gameplay style with no indication that it was pandering to anyone's demands like Shadow the Hedgehog blatantly was i.e Shadow fanboys ask for Sonic to be given a gun so Iizuka did so.

 

But that's besides my point, which was that the Werehog was no more tacked-on and perplexing as the nine Wisp forms in Colours. People call out the Werehog as being some bizarre concept that Sonic Team pulled out of their asses, citing that the nature of the form change is not at home in Sonic. I'd say this is the pot calling the kettle black when comparing it to Colours, as that game is equally guilty of the exact same things IMO except to me, the Werehog was actually fun to play as and had interesting relevance to the story.

 

It's something called execution.

Wisp forms were executed poorly to me. They're nowhere near as fun to use as often claimed because they have extremely few abilities, the level design hardly ever facilitate their use beyond 'immediate' and many of the gimmicks that make use of them take control completely away from you, so the game basically plays itself when you make use of the level design that makes use of them. And there was tons of potential for their use in narrative.

[Nix]

The World Ends With You is pretty much a giant clusterfuck of "what the hell are they thinking?"

 

-At first glance, it's a linear JRPG that's structured in missions

-Invisible walls that impede your progress until you fufill some sort of arbitrary condition

-LIKE A BOLT FROM THE BLUE, HERE COMES THE REAPER REVIEW (constantly quizzing you on useless shit you'd never need to know until that very moment in the game, and impedes your progress by doing so)

-dialogue options that are completely useless

-gimmicky touch screen controls and Duel Screen gameplay at the exact same fucking time

-a large variety of weapons that only serve a very specific purpose and are activated via even gimmickier inputs like shouting or blowing into the goddamn mike

-fashion system that involves setting trends by the clothes you wear, and you can only wear certain clothes once you get a near useless stat to raise by grinding, and each clothing has a specific ability on them, but you only learn said ability by becoming best buds with the shopkeeper who sold you the clothes in the first place, but the only way to do that is to buy even more clothes from them that you don't know the ability to

-social networking shit that's required for 100% completion

 

etc. etc.

 

And yet, TWEWY defies all expectations and comes together forming one of the greatest RPG's that I've ever played.

 

[Tornado]

Werehog wasn't pandering to anyone or anything. Hashimoto saw it necessary to expand upon the game by including another form that focuses on a different gameplay style with no indication that it was pandering to anyone's demands like Shadow the Hedgehog blatantly was.

I have a hard time believing that it was merely coincidence that the Werehog burst on the scene when God of War was one of the biggest franchises on the market, just as I don't believe it was coincidence that ShtH was dropped on the market so soon after Jak II and Ratchet and Clank started printing money.

 

But that's besides my point, which was that the Werehog was no more tacked-on and perplexing as the nine Wisp forms in Colours.

The fact that the Werehog was implemented into the game purposely segregated from the regular gameplay makes it a lightning rod for how much it clashes with the regular game and is exactly where the "tacked on" comments come from; and it also makes the arguments for how fun and well executed it was in comparison to the Wisps irrelevant because that isn't what the topic is about. No one cares about the Wisps because the way Sega implemented them into the game (and advertised them) was as inoffensive as everything else in Colors. Everyone cares about the Werehog because Sonic Team purposely drew attention to it when Sonic's reputation was already in the shitter (and "The Adventure games were never good" was at a fever pitch), despite warnings that there would be backlash against the game from the start if they did so.

[Goldenlink64]

I really don't know why the werehog gets so much crap when it's nothing more than an extension of what they had been doing since Sonic Adventure.

 

Because each Werehog stage could take as little as 10 minutes (if you're speedrunning) and up to 45 minutes each per stage depending on which one you're playing... and they took up more than half of the game.

 

Big the Cat's gameplay sucked, but the stages could at least be finished in 5 minutes if you know what you're doing and you could quickly get them out of the way easily so you could get back to the good part of the game. Werehog not so much.

[Scott]

'06 has been mentioned enough as has ShTH. Werehog IS NOT A "WTF were they thinking!?" thing to me regarding the concept of it. If the Werehog is guilty of being some odd idea that has no relevance to the accepted 'standard' for Sonic gameplay and is a bizarre concept as an alternate form of Sonic regarding how it came about and what it can do then Sonic's nine forms in Colours are absolutely guilty of the same 'crime'.

 

Sonic Chronicles will always strike me as a "WTF were they thinking?!" instance;

 

 

Why?

 

......Just why?

 

Bioware is a studio of high pedigree and has proven this to be so quite consistently. So why the bloody hell was the ball so tremendously fumbled regarding this game? I hear that the developer was in the middle of an EA takeover yet when you take into consideration that magazine interviews attested to the company's "love" and "respect" for the Sonic franchise, you'd think that they would invest the effort into the game that speaks of this respect regardless of the inconveniences the studio was going through.

 

The result was so mindblowingly incompetent, so starkly amateurish and is filled with such massive missed opportunities and direness that I just have to ask myself the mystifying question about what the hell went wrong. The visuals and music are craptacular, the characters are OOC, Shade is a boring creator's pet who exhibits no compelling personality, the gameplay is unbalanced and boring, the game design is awful as a whole and the entire game is flat-out half-arsed.

 

It boggles the mind.

 

This? Why is this a WTF? It isn't much different than Mass Effect! And who created Mass Effect? Bioware..

 

Like Mass Effect, Sonic Chronicles features:

 

Many places/areas to explore

 

Many side missions

 

Many characters to add to your team

 

A Party system

 

A good, bad & Ugly (asshole) Dialog option for every conversation

 

Limited customization (in the form of Chao Eggs)

 

A Spaceship! :U

 

All in all, the way I see it, Bioware were doing what succeeded for them on the Xbox. Was it the smart thing? Probably not. Was the game terrible? That's up to the consumer. Myself? No, I loved it, had hit and miss music though.

[Vertekins]

This? Why is this a WTF? It isn't much different than Mass Effect! And who created Mass Effect? Bioware..

 

Like Mass Effect, Sonic Chronicles features:

 

Many places/areas to explore

 

Many side missions

 

Many characters to add to your team

 

A Party system

 

A good, bad & Ugly (asshole) Dialog option for every conversation

 

Limited customization (in the form of Chao Eggs)

 

A Spaceship! :U

 

All in all, the way I see it, Bioware were doing what succeeded for them on the Xbox. Was it the smart thing? Probably not. Was the game terrible? That's up to the consumer. Myself? No, I loved it, had hit and miss music though.

 

You're missing the point entirely that none of these aspects were pulled off with any grace at all, hence the reason as to why I consider the game a case of "What were they thinking?" especially when compared to their other games.

 

Great ideas? Yes. Pulled off well? Hell no.

[Diogenes]

I think you'd have to suck pretty bad to take 45 minutes on a werehog level. That's like, the entirety of Eggmanland.

 

Also SA2, 2/3 of the game being filler shit, still proclaimed to be the best 3D Sonic by many people...

[SenEDDtor Missile]

I think you'd have to suck pretty bad to take 45 minutes on a werehog level. That's like, the entirety of Eggmanland.

 

Also SA2, 2/3 of the game being filler shit, still proclaimed to be the best 3D Sonic by many people...

Considering it seems like most players of Sonic demos seem to be utterly terrible at even figuring out how to jump, that might not be so farfetched...

[Tornado]

Also SA2, 2/3 of the game being filler shit, still proclaimed to be the best 3D Sonic by many people...

 

"Adventure 2 was just as bad" isn't a defense when many people were also ripping the Adventure games to shreds over exactly that over 5 years before Unleashed came out.

[Diogenes]

Yeah but the werehog still gets pulled out more often as The Worst Thing Ever, when it wasn't some new travesty and it wasn't even especially bad.

[Wraith]

 

 

What the flying fuck is this steaming pile of shit?

 

It's a good idea in concept. A game focusing on Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and Kingdom Hearts 2's most badass characters? A multiplayer mode where I get to play as them and fight alongside my friends? Hell yeah. 

 

But the battle system was stripped of all it;s appeal. The customization was too annoying and overly complicated to make you want to bother. The story, instead of focusing on what it advertised, puts most of the fucking characters on the backburner and instead focuses on a new character that adds absolutely nothing to the story and is basically a mary sue.

 

What a fucking disappointment. 

[Old dead account]

Werehog levels never took me THAT long. 20-...35 minutes at the most. Honestly though, it all felt like an excuse to attempt to cash on to the God of War/Dante's Inferno style of gameplay. Looking back at it as a standalone style, it's still not that engaging to me and very poor compared to the former 2 mentioned games. Sega of America allegedly warned Japan against the werehog. I think if that did happen they should have listened and just expanded more on daytime levels. The Game may not have been GOTY, but it wouldn't have been such a horrid failure in its reception...

[Tornado]

Yeah but the werehog still gets pulled out more often as The Worst Thing Ever, when it wasn't some new travesty and it wasn't even especially bad.

 

I don't know what you're trying to prove, exactly. That nostalgia exists? That a game reusing a game design hierarchy from their first 3D title that hadn't held up remotely well a decade later was treated differently on release? That a game in a series released following one of the worst games ever made was held under an electron microscope from the second it was announced?

 

 

Sonic Unleashed's alternative playstyle could have something that revitalized the entire genre like Bayonetta and it still would have gotten shit on for the way they actually went about designing, implementing and advertising it. Is that unfair (even though it wasn't remotely that good or original in the end product)? Sure. Is it still Sonic Team's fault for going through with something that was extremely (and obviously) controversial, and had been for half a decade by that point; and thus something that falls under "What the hell were they thinking"? Yep.

[Diogenes]

I just wonder why it gets shit on more than so many other stupid things the series has done considering it's no different a mistake and it's done better than a lot of previous ones.

[Goldenlink64]

I think you'd have to suck pretty bad to take 45 minutes on a werehog level. That's like, the entirety of Eggmanland.

 

Also SA2, 2/3 of the game being filler shit, still proclaimed to be the best 3D Sonic by many people...

 

I said it could go as high as 45 depending on the level, not every level. Also doesn't change the fact that the "filler" sections in SA2 could be finished in 5-7 minutes and got over with meanwhile each Warehog level ranges from 15-30 minutes each whether if you're speed running or not.

[Diogenes]

I remember spending 30+ minutes in Death Chamber my first time through.

[Soniman]

I remember spending 30+ minutes in Death Chamber my first time through.

 

But then couldn't I just use that "you just suck" excuse like you did for the Werehog?

[Diogenes]

I guess.

[JezMM]

Here's a few little ones that have affected me in recent games I've been playing:

 

- In Mario Party 3, you could set the movement speed on the board to fast.  Unless it appeared in Mario Party 7, 8 or 9, which I haven't played, this is a feature that perplexes me as to why it wasn't kept.

 

- In Donkey Kong Country Returns I am baffled by the rocket barrel levels thus far.  Like who thought it'd be fun to make a bunch of levels which pit you against awkward unusual controls more than stage hazards.

 

- Sonic Adventure 2 and the lack of ability to skip Chao Race intros.

 

- Mario Kart 7's complete lack of custom game features

 

Kind of a small one, but also very dumb.

Throughout Skyward Sword, electricity is the enemy. Your sword touches it, you get zapped.

During the final battle, you lose access to your skyward strike, where you raise your sword and power it up to shoot an energy slash.

In the second half of the fight, lighting begins to strike around you.

How, in this circumstance, given everything you've learned throughout the game, are you supposed to guess that you're supposed to use your sword as a lightning rod to get an electrified energy slash? Why would you raise your sword when you no longer have access to the ability that is used for. Why would being struck by lighting suddenly be a good thing when you've spent the whole game getting knocked on your ass by touching anything electrified. Why.

 

Ugh this so much.  Ridiculously unintuitive final boss and I think is 50% of the reason the game left me with such a sour taste in my mouth overall.

[Pawn]

Aside from Big in Adventure, the Werehog felt more at odds with Sonic's gameplay than any other style had before it. A slow-paced beat 'em up with intricate platforming couldn't have been more different to a Sonic that virtually rips through levels and enemies at the push of a button.

[RK64]

The Werehog was a bizzar addition to the series and it took away from the day gameplay, but they were very solid and at times more enjoyable than the day levels themselves.  I do understand the frustrations with the combat though; they really should have given you more moves from the start and they should have optimized the games frame rate during the stages (same could be said for the day stages as well).