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

[turbojet]

I am not going to use the Sonic bit because you guys got that shit covered.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF1H5IGBgPQ

After 6 stages of flying around without a fucking whim and being a goddamn ninja. They decided to throw this shit at you. You are in a confined area surrounded by motherfuckers on steroids. It is bad enough that the game is essentially structured that Faith has the endurance of hose mooks you waste in Call of Duty, but this stage takes away the one equalizer that Faith has and bottlenecks the player in situations where they are most likely to die. This stage is frustrating and pretty much embodies the problems of the game all in one level. The level design itself is wonky as it is never clear exactly where you need to go or how you should get there. It just throws in a room full of armed goons and says good luck. You don't feel the intensity because you literally die in seconds of entering the combat zone. Just what in the fuck were they thinking with this stage. They should have offered an alternate route in which you don't have top encounter that mess and the route in the stage should have been given to less experienced players. The level of frustration with this stage is annoying and thank god for the stupid enemy AI because it would be impossible to beat...until you play hard mode and find out the enemies don't fucking miss. Goddammit.

[Blacklightning]

"Oh no, our games are not going to make enough money. We'd better fix the problem by throwing more money at it", said every AAA developer ever. Frankly it fucking stuns me that so many developers can continue to invest in these blatant, dead-end money sinks, then spend so much time blaming the consumer for not giving them enough money back that they don't realize they forgot to make an actual fucking game to start with. And honestly, I'd have less of a problem with it if it weren't for the fact most of that money goes into superflous cutscene bullshit.

 

On a less broad note, until now I'd forgotten how retarded the premise behind Unreal Tournament 3 was. They could easily have just made it out to be another Liandri deathmatch tournament and everyone would be none the wiser, but for some reason they felt the need to spin it as actual warfare without even trying to hide the fact that it's basically just the same bloodsport by any other name. It's bad enough that they replaced the tourney ladder with a series of skirmishes that all amount to the same "kill the enemy x times" (and not even enabling the satisfaction of killing those motherfuckers legit even after justifying it as "their respawners run out of energy"), but even expect us to take something as silly as Capture the Flag seriously, as if your flag is supposed to power your team's respawns infinentely whilst completely failing to justify capping it several times where they'd tried to find an excuse for just about everything else.

 

It's not quite "Bomberman: Act Zero" levels of trying too fucking hard, but god damnit it comes close. It really bothers me that Epic did something like that whilst continuing to avoid making any kind of successor to the original Unreal, which only needed its atmosphere and a bunch of text boxes to be a compelling game in its own right.

[Tori Himemiya]

If we're talking meta then I'm gonna bring up Darkstalkers again. Darkstalkers is one of my favorite video game series ever, if you hadn't noticed yet. But it just baffles me that Capcom won't do anything with it or even make a Darkstalkers 4 for that matter. I mean sure Capcom lately have been on an idiot streak as of late but at least they continued with Megaman, for a while anyways. Darkstalkers hasn't seen an original game since Darkstalkers 3 which was one the Playstation 1. All Darkstalkers ever gets these days are really ports and cameos. Hell recently Capcom released Darkstalkers Resurrection which is the arcade versions of Night Warriors and Darkstalkers 3 and they say it didn't sell well enough to save the series. It does hurt that some, if not most of Darkstalkers staff jumped with some SNK staff to create Arc System Works and went off to create Guilty Gear and BlazBlue. I don't mind cameos as much but most of the time its just Morrigan and hardly anyone else to the point its saying "hey we have fanservice!" In recent memory Cross Edge and Project X Zone has been generous with their cameos as of late but I just want them to have their own game again but they're not getting anything.

And then there's leaving Dino Crisis' cliffhanger ending and leaving that to die with the shitty Dino Crisis 3. You know at this point I don't think I'll be able to forgive Capcom, not even if they're teasing me with Darkstalkers 4. I guess they're run by monkeys.

[SuperStingray]

I think Sega (at least in the West) is "What Were They Thinking: The Company."  They sit on an IP goldmine and yet have zero marketing.  They delayed Anarchy Reigns despite being one of the only two big games in that release window (effectively squandering their trust with Platinum as well.)  And to top it, the one game released this year that they DID decide to advertise they didn't even bother checking up on enough to realize the developer was misappropriating funds.  I never thought I'd say this, but Sega is currently handling Sonic more competently than anything else they're doing right now.

Edited June 27, 2013 by Stingray 64

[Old dead account]

I guess another one would be using the exact same peach gets kidnapped by Bowser story in almost every main Mario game. I understand wanting to focus solely on gameplay, but dang Miyamoto, don't be afraid to throw a Mole wrench every once in a while and spice things up in other ways than the excellent gameplay that delivers pretty much every time... But since these games still sell in the high millions all the time it's probably a moot point. That and the fact that the RPGs fill that void from what I hear. Also, why release NSMB2 and NSMBU within months of each other? I'd have waited just a few more years for one of them. NSMB2 could've used a lot of polishing to not feel so generic.

[MegasonicZX]

I think Sega (at least in the West) is "What Were They Thinking: The Company."  They sit on an IP goldmine and yet have zero marketing.  They delayed Anarchy Reigns despite being one of the only two big games in that release window (effectively squandering their trust with Platinum as well.)  And to top it, the one game released this year that they DID decide to advertise they didn't even bother checking up on enough to realize the developer was misappropriating funds.  I never thought I'd say this, but Sega is currently handling Sonic more competently then anything else they're doing right now.

I'm surprised no ones brought this up yet along with capcom, honestly I think if sega utilized there IP's better and tried to do something with them every once in awhile they would probably be on top of the world right now.

[KHCast]

I don't know if this is a positive or negative, but its still a wtf. Putting Crisis City in Generations. I guess it makes some sense, but still for SEGA to pull out of the shitter one of the most notorious levels from one of the most hated games and place it in what is considered by many to be one of Sega's best recent titles was a pretty surprising thing to see.(especially since many thought they'd either skip it or do a secret rings stage.) it was even more surprising to see that it was actually quite fun. Really shows that Sega wanted to send the message that they wanted to show is that levels and concepts from that game could have been good.

Edited June 27, 2013 by Schnitzel

[Dantemustdie00]

Let me correct this to "The Entirety of Sonic 06"

You know, I would've been somewhat non-disgusted with that seen if Sega didn't made the humans so freaking Realistic, it doesn't fit AT ALL with the super cartoony Sonic Cast.

 

For now on, Sega better hire Giruhiru to do their humans in Sonic games for now on (They done the Unleashed humans)

 

 

And then their was the whole "Where does Blaze come from?" confusion that spawned afterwards, as well as the Dr. Nega confusion too, through I'm pretty sure they fixed them in their right places by now.

[DarkLight]

You know, I would've been somewhat non-disgusted with that seen if Sega didn't made the humans so freaking Realistic, it doesn't fit AT ALL with the super cartoony Sonic Cast.

 

For now on, Sega better hire Giruhiru to do their humans in Sonic games for now on (They done the Unleashed humans)

 

 

And then their was the whole "Where does Blaze come from?" confusion that spawned afterwards, as well as the Dr. Nega confusion too, through I'm pretty sure they fixed them in their right places by now.

 

It also would've helped if Elise was written as a better character (then again everyone in game suffered from bad writing in various ways) and didn't pull that half-assed and contrived as hell romance as a means to justify a reason for her to kiss him besides the obvious fairytale cliche' "the kiss of life."

[iDEATH]

remember this ad?

 

It was oddly popular at the time.

"Wow" someone would say "Footballers as spies, how cool"

"I like the part with the samurai" someone else would say in agreement

"I wish I could enjoy the thrills of being a samurai battling football spy from the safety of my own home" a third person would chime in.

 

And as the nation took to the streets, rioting, demanding the chance to be football spies, Sony and Nike looked down on them from up high and said.

"You're welcome"

 

 

....either that or it was a shameless cash in.

 

I can't remember which....

[Gabz Girl]

The entirety of Sonic 06, obviously. And Werehog could've been awesome, but his gameplay was really annoying and his stages took far too long to complete. Sonic stages should never be too short, but 30 minutes is ridiculous.

 

Speaking of Skyward Sword, what about

Ganondorf

being the final boss of Twilight Princess. WTF? Where did he come from? All this time in the story everything was about Zant (which IMHO was a great villain) and suddenly he's unceremoniously replaced! He didn't even have much to do with the story. Was he only there for fanservice? Because from what I can tell he's nowhere to be found in Skyward Sword. So what were they thinking when they put him in TP?!

 

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

 

Huh. It took me 10 minutes to beat that stage on my first try.

[Iggy]

Because from what I can tell he's nowhere to be found in Skyward Sword. So what were they thinking when they put him in TP?

He's not in Skyward Sword because in the timeline of the games Skyward Sword took place a

long time before Twilight Princess.

You see, most Zelda games (with a few exceptions) take place about a century after each other, give or take. The timeline doesn't say how many years pass inbetween each game exactly, but it is implied that many, many years do pass.

Edited June 27, 2013 by SheWhoRantsTooMuch

[Balding Spider]

Playstation All-stars Battle or rather it's limited way of killing your opponents. You have your characters moves with weapons galore in this game, you also have the bottomless pit, yet neither of them can be used to off your opponent. Instead you have to focus on building a meter attack, and repeat this process again hoping the super attack connects otherwise all that work was for nothing.

[Milo]

I would complain about Sonic 4 but that would be too obvious. So I'll go with Tom and Jerry: The Movie. They literally took a musical about some girl who ran away from her greedy aunt and her lawyer to look for her father, shoved Tom, Jerry, and Droopy in it, gave Tom and Jerry voices, and made them friends. It is literally a case of a film being In Name Only, only the first five-ten minutes and the last minute of the film is anything like the original theatrical shorts. Special criticism goes to the scene in the beginning in which they showed Tom getting sliced and falling apart into bloody chunks. Again, In Name Only because the shorts, as violent as they were, had none of that shit whatsoever.

[turbojet]

I'm going to piss off some people here when I say this.

This piece of shit right here. Now I know what you are thinking, "It wasn't that bad,"(It was) or "you are just overreacting," (I'm not.). In all honestly though, this game was mediocre and always was going to be mediocre. No doubt about that. The mechanics, though, sucked as expected from the people who brought you Heavenly Sword. It was way too easy to glitch Dante to the point that it was as if the developers wanted glitching to be a game mechanic. We are talking skipping entrances, bosses appearing in neutral states where you can't hit them, having sweet spots in the final boss so the Vergil can't hit you, glitching invisible weapons, having full abilities that the game gives you and then using those abilities in previous levels allows the player to go out of bounds, being able to combine cutscenes, skipping battle triggers, using infinite loops, enemies not spawning properly, and the fucking flying glitch.

 

But that is just the mechanics. The overall difficulty of the game went straight to the shitter as infinite jump Dante can stay in the air for fucking ever. Fuck physics and skill, right? To compare, in DMC3 it was a challenge to stay in the ir by launching off enemies. DMC4 continued that tradition by making it even more of a challenge.The weapons are set off by triggers by severely limit the gameplay capability of Devil May Cry because these triggers aren't styles nor do they function as individual weapons like in the previous games. For example, styles contribute a lot of what you can do with a weapon to the point that it either enhances the capability of the weapon in use or restricts it. Gunslinger with Archer from DMC allows you to rain down satellite laser beams from the air. Durga with Royal Guard allows you to guard cancel attack. Sniper Rifle with Gunslinger allows you to cancel your attack while getting your shot off and fire again. Useful and effective shit that the player can find out about. In DmC, it is button mash central and finding shit means little to nothing as weapons that are supposed to be in use are over powered. Hell weapons are severely overpowered so Dick Theory tried to offset that by having foes that only can be hit by a certain type of attack again fucking with the creativity that the series was built on. Speaking of which, the weapons suffer from balance issues as the axe murders folks. The Devil Trigger is just QuickSilver with additional damage in which,combined with Demon Dodge, you can straight murder bosses. This is bad compared to the Devil Trigger of other games in which there were exclusive moves of the transformation, additional techs, and etc. Devil Trigger was more than just overpowered Dante(it was never overpowered, just different). This game severely limits what the player could actually do and thus seems like a regression instead of progression in the series. It is like Sonic Team making Colors, Generations, and Lost World and then going back to Sonic 06. It is like they just didn't give a shit.

 

And the story....fuck the story. It is the most pretentious hipster bullshit plot that I've seen since watching Donnie Darko at a Panera Bread. For one, Dante is an unrelenting douche. For two, this game is cutscene heavy so you are treated with Dante being an unrelenting douche constantly. Characters are flatter than the ass of Hank Hill. It is oddly reminiscent of the remake of bionic Commando with the number of fucks and shit being thrown around. The plot tries so hard to take itself so seriously, but fuck this game and it's anti-establishment bullshit. "Lookatme I'm Dante I live in a trailer like a transient hobo instead of getting a real job because fuck the system man. Aren't I so kewl?" Eat a dick, Dante!

 

From the very beginning, this game was attempting to be a re-imagining of Devil May Cry. Making it "better." So there intent was re-imagining this series for a new audience with the implication of the old series, along with it's characters and defining gameplay mechanics, would be discarded and forgotten. This is what had people pissed off. Not a fucking haircut. This is a series that a lot of people, including myself, cared about and for no fucking reason, they replace it. It was reboot that no one wanted. Instead of finishing DMC4, we get this shit that was as half ass as a half done DMC4 and it cost just as much money. The fuck were you thinking Capcom?

[Inkling Cooper]

I think the Shadow the Hedgehog trailer. Did anyone think that felt like a april fools joke?

[Teoskaven]

In Final Fantasy XIII-2 SE decided for some reason to insert a maximum digit level limit to the accessories you can equip: as a result, you can barely equip more then 1-2 useful accessories or just take the 4 slots with crappy/mediocre things.

Why ruining this part? It was almost essential in the first game for the most hard challenges. But considering the rest of the game, i shouldn't be surprised too much.

[Gabz Girl]

I just remembered another one. Action 52, possibly the worst game in existence. Worse than ET and far worse than Sonic 06. Each of the 52 games is too short, have numerous glitches, have really crappy music and some are even unplayable! Then there's Cheetahmen, the only game which actually does have some kickass music but still ends up being crap. Here's a great video where every game is explained in depth (warning: it's long).

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdQ26zjH5q4

[RK64]

Playstation All-stars Battle or rather it's limited way of killing your opponents. You have your characters moves with weapons galore in this game, you also have the bottomless pit, yet neither of them can be used to off your opponent. Instead you have to focus on building a meter attack, and repeat this process again hoping the super attack connects otherwise all that work was for nothing.

 

I have to say that PSASBR is the perfect example for this topic.  The game had so much potential and all they had to do is take the Smash formula and take PS characters/environments alongside classic 3rd party icons like Crash, Cloud and Snake.  But they failed that simple concept; Sony has great characters and franchises, but unlike Nintendo, Sony's legacy is tied from characters they don't own and they even had to fight to use the characters they own (you would think Sony would have put in Wander and other classic characters if that wasn't the case).  The combat was fun, but people wanted more ways to defeat foes, rather than a solid but otherwise bizzar super system.  Its just a shame the game turned out the way it did, and I even liked the tittle

[iDEATH]

I would complain about Sonic 4 but that would be too obvious. So I'll go with Tom and Jerry: The Movie. They literally took a musical about some girl who ran away from her greedy aunt and her lawyer to look for her father, shoved Tom, Jerry, and Droopy in it, gave Tom and Jerry voices, and made them friends. It is literally a case of a film being In Name Only, only the first five-ten minutes and the last minute of the film is anything like the original theatrical shorts. Special criticism goes to the scene in the beginning in which they showed Tom getting sliced and falling apart into bloody chunks. Again, In Name Only because the shorts, as violent as they were, had none of that shit whatsoever.

 

Totally agree with this, but I still can't help but kinda love T&J the movie. I seen it so much as a kid, I like the songs.

 

It fails totally as a Tom and Jerry film but it's in that so bad it's good category for me

[Spin Attaxx]

I just remembered another one. Action 52, possibly the worst game in existence. Worse than ET and far worse than Sonic 06. Each of the 52 games is too short, have numerous glitches, have really crappy music and some are even unplayable! Then there's Cheetahmen, the only game which actually does have some kickass music but still ends up being crap. Here's a great video where every game is explained in depth (warning: it's long).

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdQ26zjH5q4

Or you can watch it in multiple parts without the bad hollow sound here.

 

Oh btw, I once tried to ROMhack it to salvage it, but due to my inexpertise in it, I gave up on it.

Edited June 28, 2013 by Spin Attaxx

[Milo]

Well, shit. I just realized that the thread called for examples in gaming and I posted a film example.

 

OK, ok, let's see....I'm sorry, I can't think of any other game that aggravates me so much than Sonic 4. I'll just focus on the design choices. It's just seemed that Dimps chose the most blatantly obvious flaws and bad decisions of game/level design for Sonic 4, namely regarding all of the automation. There are so many automated segments that don't need to be there.

[Badnik Mechanic]

This one has happened in a number of different games... but one company stands out...

 

Ubisoft... Will you please stop putting 20min long credits sequences in your games that are unskipable?

[Vec]

 

 

 

 

Is that...Edgar Davids? And I though that him using glasses during matches was weird...

 

 

Well this technique from Guy was only in the first UNS game. No wonder why they got rid of it...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leQzIGGd-ys

 

I mean, come on...in this game most of the cast are kids...him doing this technique on them is really akward (And strangely...he always aims at the same place...). Why did they place him like that? O.O

Edited July 2, 2013 by Deadly Zec

[Noir]

Metroid: Other M is literally not in the slightest bit a Metroid game, it has not a single defining characteristic of the series, there is no sense of isolation, no mild fear, no exploration, no wonder, the controls are tripe, the gameplay boils down to spamming the dodge until you get to watch a special move that lost all interest beyond the first instance, the music is exceptionally bland and forgettable, the characterization entirely contradicts everything we know about both Samus and Adam, the other NPCs serve no substantial purpose, plot points are brought up and unceremoniously forgotten with little to no resolution, what little coherent plot there is is almost entirely recycled from Metroid Fusion and spoon-fed through poorly written and poorly delivered monologues, etc., etc., et fucking cetera

 

All this from a series known for its impecable atmosphere and fantastic scores, for fairly challenging or at the very least, far more engaging gameplay than Other M, a series that had spent the previous ten years building a reputation for intricate stories left for the player to piece together at their leisure, and had painted a considerably clear picture of who Samus is without giving her one word of dialogue. It is such an impressive series and for this game to come along with not one aspect of why the series is great left intact was a slap in the face and an embarrassment and I will question how something could go so massively wrong until I am in my grave.

 

 

On a different subject, Xen was a real fuckin looney surprise. First person platforming is always a little funky but doable, but hey why not muck around with the physics so it's even harder to land jumps. Really any time a game tries mixing things up at the very end is especially questionable.