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

[Mando-Whirl-Wind]

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.

well there was one good guy introduced in other M, the guy with the huge shoulder cannon who tried to attack ridley by himself.... when samus was standing by scared(boy how screwed up is that for the series(facepalm))

[Covskin]

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

 

Edgar Davids wears those goggles because he has glaucoma - he even needed special permission from FIFA to wear them in matches.

 

But uh, that's off-topic.

 

 

I suppose the elephant in the thread is the Xbox One. I mean, the whole thing in general, but as we have a thread for that I won't go over old ground again.

 

 

Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg was pretty weird. A magical chicken suit? Its one of the more bizarre premises for a game that I've ever played.

[Jolt_TH]

But it was one hell of a fun game!! You even got to hatch Sonic from the Sonic Team egg in multiplayer

I'm going to say. Not putting a save feature in Ecco the Dolphin defender of the future. The game is great but some of the levels are really long , with multiple objectives and you can't save until you have completed it and moved only the next one! It's a shame because they have multiple spawn points if you die, but no mid game save, would have been great for a few levels (I'm looking at you Hanging Waters!)

[GreatAndPowerful]

Kinect controls for Sonic Free Riders. I guess this applies to most games that use Kinect based on what I‘ve heard, but who’s idea was it to put unresponsive motion controls into what could have been an enjoyable game? The previous Riders games worked without them, so why use them now? Next time, they should make motion controls optional or not even use them in the first place.

 

Also, I have to give a shout-out to hearing “That looks like a homing shot!” every few seconds when fighting the Time Eater, that really gets annoying after a while.