RPGWW

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.120730

Seriously, what the hell? Guild-whiners? Missed achievements? Go home and be a family man!

Here's my top-ten list of frustrating gaming moments (not in ranking order):

#1: Clocktower of Castlevania IV. Spikes fucking everywhere, moving camera and enemies throwing you backwards. Fuck yeah.

#2: Ghosts'n Goblins. Surprisingly easy past stage 2... until you meet five red demons in a row.

#3: Marriage bug in Harvest Moon to PSX. Apparantly all European versions had this to a point. Once you get married, you go to bed, and your wife kills you in your sleep. Pretty cool when you've put down 90+ gaming hours and you're still only half-way through the fucking game.

#4: Forgetting the fire extinguisher on an otherwise awesome speed run in Code Veronica. Without it, no Magnum. Good luck against the final boss lol.

#5: Resurrecting Aerith. Before GameFaqs, you'd believe anything. Even if not a single event happened like they said it would.

#6: King's Quest. LOL. Forgot to buy the right, randomly-selected lamp from the salesman in the first act? Good luck in the final act. Passed over the bridge once before? You'll die on the next walk over. Want to summon the pegasus? Play on the fucking harp in a melody you won't find ANYWHERE.

#7: Racing-game in Mafia. I rage-quitted so many times it's not even funny. Great game, but that shit just ruined it.

#8: Pitfalls in Metal Gear. Hey, look, that floor looks just like everything else. Except, it's not. You die. Ha ha.

#9: Battletoads

#10: Alex the Kidd: High-Tech world. First you need to find eight pieces to a fucking map, fly off the roof of your house with a kite, battle your way thruogh a forest full of ninjas who for some god-foreseen reason wants to kill you, only to find a town which is FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE to clear. Thanks Sega. Thanks.

So, what're your wonderful childhood memories?

Christian wrote:#3: Marriage bug in Harvest Moon to PSX. Apparantly all European versions had this to a point. Once you get married, you go to bed, and your wife kills you in your sleep. Pretty cool when you've put down 90+ gaming hours and you're still only half-way through the fucking game.

What. Is there actually dialogue accompanying this event, or is it just a game crash?

No, I just told myself that's what happens.

Truth is, no matter when you get married, who you get married to or what you want them to call you, the game hangs up.

Christian, it's because you didn't use 99 tissues first.

:<

?

Christian wrote:#9: Battletoads

Amen.

I think this list cheats. First, you assume there's a "finish" to Harvest Moon. Second, you list something that doesn't actually happen in a game.

Submitted for replacement is playing co-op through campaign-style in Brawl. God fucking forbid you try to play with a second player in a game that is, purportedly, made for multiplayer.

There's the part where you finish 3½ years and get reviewed on whether you can keep the farm. You MUST be married and have children to get past that point, amongst other things. Of course, the game doesn't end there, but you can't even reach that part of it with this bug, a bug that was prevalent in ALL copies of the first release of the game in EU...

And if you'd check out what those reviewers are saying, they have a pretty wider definition there. "I need to upgrade my hardware" is not exactly in a game either.

Finally, this is, as I mentioned, my list of woes. I haven't even played Brawl, I don't own a Wii and I don't play with friends, so your proposal is declined.

Super Monkey Ball. Really neat concept, really fun game... up to a certain point. Eventually the levels begin to require a level of precision that I don't think is actually achievable by human hands.

Microsoft Live DLC licensure bullshit. God forbid we live in a world where it is possible to exchange money for goods and/or services. Looks like we're moving into a world where, at most, you can expect to exchange money for the right to occasionally use goods and/or services wholly owned by other people under certain conditions, in certain locations, during certain lunar phases.

Prototype. Super-fun game. You can pretty much ignore the plot, but the way you get to the plot is pretty neat. You consume people who have links to what's going on, and absorb their memories, and therein the plot is revealed to you, along with the next few guys in the chain of memories. As cliché as amnesia is, that's a pretty novel way to combat it. But later in the game, chasing down these motherfuckers is a trial and a half, because by that time the T-Virus Blacklight has taken over the vast majority of the population and the few people who aren't zombies are running like crazy from all the people who are, and among the chaos, it is unnecessarily difficult to grab the specific dude you want to eat. The game's targeting mechanism doesn't always help. I can't tell you how many times I've lost one of these guys because I ran up behind him and pressed the "grab a dude" button, only to grab the zombie that was chasing the guy rather than the guy with the big orange "EAT THIS GUY!" symbol over his head. And then while I'm tossing the mutant freak I just picked up, my actual target either gets eaten by zombies or caught in military crossfire. SUPER FUN. I got so paranoid that I can't even run up to a dude now; I get close and then slowly amble behind him, trying to make absolutely sure that I am right next to, and directly facing, my target, and even still it seems equally likely that I'll grab anything but the guy I want inside me. It's been a long time since a game has pissed me off consistently enough that I eventually reached a point where I just turn it off every time a particular problem occurs.

Brawl: Why isn't Mega Man in this game? Who thought that having characters randomly slip when running was a good idea? Why does story mode have to constantly remind player 2 that he's a tacked-on afterthought? Why do New Pork City and that one Pokemon stage with the legendaries have to suck so bad? Why does ROB's smash attack absolutely not compare whatsoever with anyone else's? Why is half the content of a game that everyone buys for the multiplayer hidden behind lengthy one-player gameplay? Why does the Hanebow stage have to make me sad that I couldn't find a reasonably priced copy of Electroplankton anywhere? There's a bunch of little (and a couple big) things that really add up to mar an otherwise fun experience. It's because the game is generally so enjoyable that these things stand out more. This was supposed to be the game that dethroned Melee, and instead now we don't play either. I miss me some Smash Brothers.

It also kind of bothers me that Sonic was in the game, and they made such a big deal about it, but it feels like he was kind of rushed in at the last minute. He doesn't feel as solid as the rest of the characters, although he's still fun to play. And what's with not showing up in Story mode until everyone's already fighting the final boss? I thought it was Snake's job to keep us waiting, huh. And why isn't Mega Man in that game, anyway?

Scribblenauts. It's not out yet.

Games in general. It's always kind of bothered me that I have many favorite moments in many of the games I've played, but I can't actually get to them without having the foresight to save a game ahead of time, and without enough storage space to save before all my favorite parts of a game. It'd be kind of neat if games had a "scene selection" feature like home movie releases. Maybe unlockable once you've beaten the game or something.

Street Fighter IV. Double quarter circle AND three buttons? Charge 1 to 319 with three buttons? Secret inputs for specials, inputs which aren't listed anywhere? Move cancelling by holding two buttons (which are in an awkward position for a stick, and why would you ever try to play this seriously on a pad) and then inputting a dash? A parry system that sometimes actually works? Link combos with single-frame windows of validity? Fluffy physics that sometimes result in bad hits? A completely unbalanced ranking system online? The complete and utter inability to record your matches unless you're one of the best 100 players in the goddamned world? And somehow it sucked enough reviewers' dicks to get them to all say that the game is simple and newbie-accessible? Fuck that.

Also, I state that my earlier point stands, since we are supposed to be making a list that is better than their list, and as such are not beholden to their stupidities.

I see Priam has met SF4. Fucking game. And they're planning on an upgraded version soon.

Also: I play fighters on keyboards on occasion, so a stick actually does nothing for me anymore. o.o;;

Keyboard is superior in SFIV, I have no problem performing most of the moves, though I admit I got stuck in Challenge when I was supposed to do a crouching punch and then a shoryouken... damn game.

Sticks are something you have to get used to. I learned fighters on arrow keys, and can still do a dragon punch on 'em without really thinking about it. A stick is best, though, in my findings--it's superior to keyboard in that you can "flow" from direction to direction more easily, and more importantly, more quickly (double quarter circles and 720s are not friendly on keypads, for instance); it's superior to pads in that you can have eight buttons available to you at all times with relative facility, and your directional input is more precise. Downside? Expensive. Worth it? Usually, if you're going to be at all serious about actually shoryukening when you want to.

Actually after having experience with all three, at this point I prefer certain pads. Sticks get really finicky, perhaps too much so for my tastes. Either that or its been so long since I used one regularly that I actually tend to get wild with teh stick when I really, REALLY need a motion to come out.

I generally would prefer a Saturn pad if I could still get ahold of them. As it stands, though, the Playstation Dual Shocks are good enough for me right now.

I used to play a lot of GGXX and I always used the PS2 pad. I'm sure the stick is superior for some people, but for me it's too big and unwieldy, especially since I was never much of an arcade-hall player (Good luck being that in Sweden when every credit costs 1½ dollars) and I've been using the PSX controllers ever since the damn console came out. But, *shrugs*, I'm not a major-league player, although whether this is because I lack stick-skillz or simply the patience to endlessly play the game until every move has been burnt into my brain, none can know.

Okay, yeah. PS2/3 pads are awesome for fighters. I, unfortunately, have had to put up with 360 pads for a while now, with SF4 and BlazBlue, and failed to give due credit to the good fighting game first-party controllers. Why is it that nobody else has designed controllers with directional pads set into the controller? Not even MadCatz! Copyright, maybe?

Relevant article. Enjoy!

Since I feel like adding to the original topic. Regarding fighting games:

"Psycho Mantis" AI: Seriously. That's the best you can do nowadays? Have the computer read your inputs and counter with something that is guaranteed to punish with reflexes that humans are incapable of having? I can see it acceptable in the days of SFII, but even as far back as SC3 for recent games? It should be an offense punishable by shooting, honestly.

Mimic bosses: A clear sign of absolute laziness--a boss whose only (maybe outside of one or two moves) capability is to use the other fighters movesets. I'm looking at you, SC2. It's honestly nothing more than a sign of outright and absolute laziness.

Amalgam characters: Not to be confused with the above, but often equally horrible in terms of developer laziness, and often horribly annoying on principle. Characters whose styles consist...of nothing other than moves from the other characters in the game. This is sometimes justified in-story, and that can alleviate some of the annoyance. It's when it's insisted on for apparently no reason other than outright laziness that the character in question becomes very, very obnoxious, design-wise. It's a sign of sheer and absolute laziness, really, and all the more annoying for being so.

Amalgam characters: Not to be confused with the above, but often equally horrible in terms of developer laziness, and often horribly annoying on principle. Characters whose styles consist...of nothing other than moves from the other characters in the game. This is sometimes justified in-story, and that can alleviate some of the annoyance. It's when it's insisted on for apparently no reason other than outright laziness that the character in question becomes very, very obnoxious, design-wise. It's a sign of sheer and absolute laziness, really, and all the more annoying for being so.

Question: Where has this come up outside of Necrid?

And do you have a problem with Necrid?

Also, just because they use the same moves as other characters does not mean they work the same way. Necrid is a great example of this, but for a better way to look at it, take Ken and Ryu and Gouki/Akuma and Dan. They have a lot of the same moves, but the windup, cooldown, active, and invulnerable properties are so vastly different on their dragon-punches alone to make character selection important and profoundly relevant.

Excepting some of his long-range flamey explosive business, I don't necessarily have a problem with Necrid as a character. I'm not a big fan of the concept of "stole yer moves!" kind of characters, but that's not necessarily a deal-breaker. My intense dislike for Necrid is concentrated heavily in the design department. Dude looks like some bored idiot pulled out a handful of crap from the "stupid comic book villain accessories" bin and glued it to an unimpressive orc figurine. Plus his name is "Necrid." Maybe if Soul Calibur were a series about cheesy comic book excess, Necrid would fight right in. But no, it's a series about cheesy historical fiction excess. As such, he's equally as retarded as Star Wars characters in SCIV. Well, maybe not equally, since demons do figure into the series' mythos, and since he's not as mechanically broken as Yoda or Starkiller. But asethetically... no thank you. At least his name isn't "Starkiller."

Also, Seth from SFIV fits into the "an amalgam of other characters' moves" category. Not a big fan of him, either, even though his voice is pretty sweet.

Well, Seth is a boss, though. And SNK notwithstanding, fighter boss characters are supposed to draw nothing but hate on all fronts.

I had more trouble with Goro than I had with Shao Kahn or Shodo Kohn or whatever the fuck that old dude's name is.

Ah, Shang Tsung.

BrainWalker wrote:Excepting some of his long-range flamey explosive business, I don't necessarily have a problem with Necrid as a character. I'm not a big fan of the concept of "stole yer moves!" kind of characters, but that's not necessarily a deal-breaker. My intense dislike for Necrid is concentrated heavily in the design department. Dude looks like some bored idiot pulled out a handful of crap from the "stupid comic book villain accessories" bin and glued it to an unimpressive orc figurine. Plus his name is "Necrid." Maybe if Soul Calibur were a series about cheesy comic book excess, Necrid would fight right in. But no, it's a series about cheesy historical fiction excess. As such, he's equally as retarded as Star Wars characters in SCIV. Well, maybe not equally, since demons do figure into the series' mythos, and since he's not as mechanically broken as Yoda or Starkiller. But asethetically... no thank you. At least his name isn't "Starkiller."

Also, Seth from SFIV fits into the "an amalgam of other characters' moves" category. Not a big fan of him, either, even though his voice is pretty sweet.

Good point, though I'd argue the SW characters (and arguably Necrid, and any guest character SC's had) fall under the "Rule of Cool". Yeah, it doesn't make a lick of sense, but it's awesome, so who cares? (Sidenote: this very fact is included ON THE PAGE I JUST LINKED). Sometimes, you just gotta forget about the flimsy excuses and try to pull off your super move.

And I just thought of another: Cell from the DBZ games... though since everyone's moves are pulled off in exactly the same way in those games, that's more of a cosmetic thing than anything.

Four words

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