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I'm not talking about minor nuisances or games that are completely broken and unplayable thanks to poor controls, programming errors, or some otherwise catastrophic failure on the devolper's part to meet industry standards. I'm talking about major inconveniences and gameplay flaws in otherwise good video games that, while they don't completely ruin the experience, come damn close to it.
I'll go first, as the whole basis of my creation of this thread was inspired by me picking up 'Dead Rising' for a quick play just last night. I know this game is old as ****, but it was $5 and it's 'pick up and play' simplicity fits my schedule perfectly, as I don't have the free time to go getting absorbed in a 50+ hour long game like I'd like to right now.
DEAD RISING
On paper this game is everything a fan of Romero and Fulci films (like myself) could ever ask for, but once you start playing it it quickly becomes apparent that it's nothing more than a diamond encrusted turd.
Small town, zombie outbreak, military quarantine, investigative journalist, shopping mall filled with survivors, 3 days to uncover the truth behind the outbreak.
Sounds cool, right? It is. Until the gameplay starts.
Jesus Christ....Where to begin? I guess I'll just list the flaws as I noticed them.
The text display - The game has a cast of ****ty voice actors who, during cutscenes, lend their voices to the characters in a laughably absurd manner to drive the story along. A lot of people have knocked the voice acting for how forced it all seems, but being a huge fan of 80s B movies within the genre, I really don't mind the bad voice acting at all.
What I do mind is that the characters cease talking once cutscenes are over, and instead you're left with text boxes that appear to read dialogue from when interacting with them. Why is this a problem? Because the text is so ****ing small that you can barely read it. Seriously, you'll go crosseyed trying to decipher this cryptic bull****.
Everytime a character interacts with you it's like a trip to the ****ing eye doctor to read the sight chart.
Otis - Since their inception, video games have had a longstanding love affair with annoying characters, but this needy ****wrinkle would take the gold medal if being a pesky prick were an olympic event.
Dude gives you a transceiver at the beginning of the game to keep in touch with you while you're venturing around the mall so that he can call you and give you information about what area you're in, tell you key locations within that area, and give you vital information about side missions.
Sounds like a perfect gameplay mechanic on paper, right? Wrong.
Within 10 minutes of recieving this transceiver (which the game forces you to take), this calcified **** knuckle quickly reveals his needy nature. Mother****er is CONSTANTLY calling you up at the most inopportune times (usually when you're making your way through an incredibly dense sea of zombies, or fighting a life and death battle with one of the games bosses) to blabber about the most rudimentary bull**** you can possibly think of.
Example : You enter the food court. Otis calls. You answer.
Otis : "Frank! You're in the food court! You can find food here!"
You have the option of irgnoring this ****'s calls, but your transceiver's ringtone is incredibly annoying, so it's best to just answer and get it over with. But that's not all. When you answer this piss stain's calls you're completely vulnerable to enemy attacks, because you put away your weapon to hold the transceiver to your ****ing ear.
If you get hit or intentionally hang up while on the line with him, the call drops, and he rings you back 2 seconds later. When you answer it, he gives you **** for hanging up on him in the first place and it takes him twice as long to say what he was originally going to say before that zombie bit your balls off.
Then there's the scoops, or sidequests that he calls you about, again, at the most inopportune times. You'll be hung up on a meat hook and being carved alive with butcher knives by one of the game's bosses, and this cantankerous **** wart will call you up going : "Frank! There's some lady barricaded in the jewelry store!"
Dude calls me up more than every girlfriend I've ever had in my entire life combined.
Survivor AI - Throughout the course of the game you will encounter a plethora of helpless survivors that the game will reward you for escourting to safety. The catch? They're all dumber than a bag of ****ing hammers.
You'll save them from whatever situation you found them in, they'll join your party, and you'll begin the process of taking them back to the safe room only to have to stop every 5 ****ing feet to save them because they ran directly into a pack of 50 zombies and naturally have no way to defend themselves.
So far, I've only successfully rescued two survivors, and that's only because the fat ****s were hanging out on the roof at the beginning of the game, well away from any zombie threats.
And I'm actually beginning to regret rescuing them, because all these obese ****heads do is sit in the safe room and cry 24/****ing 7. The game is forcing me to listen to these ****s sob and moan until help arrives. You'd think they'd settle the **** down now that I saved their goddamn lives and all, but no - They're still just as upset as they were when I found the assh*les.
Boss Battles - Fighting any boss in this game is similar to injecting yourself with that rage virus from '28 days later.' You never seem to have the proper weapons or health items when you really need them, and the bosses almost always have an arsenal of **** to kill you with. I'm talking shotguns, dual chainsaws, motorcycles, shopping carts armed with pitchforks, knives, and meat cleavers, and even a ****ing humvee with a goddamn mini-gun attached to it.
Meanwhile, what do I have? An apple, a head of cabbage, and a goddamn shower head.
NO FREE ROAMING - This game sells itself as a 'free roam' or "go anywhere, do anything' type of sandbox affair, and it is, unless you actually want to beat it. If you want to beat it, you have to stick solely to the main case files and be where the case tells you to be at the exact time it tells you to be there, and an hour goes by in-game-time so quickly, that you rarely have time to even stock up on items, let alone explore this damn mall.
Sure, there's an infinite mode, where it truly is free roaming for however long you want, but you have to beat overtime mode to unlock it, and to unlock overtime mode you have to get the A ending, which means solving the mystery of the outbreak. Which means that by the time I unlock infinite mode I'll be too ****ing bored with the game to even care.
That wraps up the rant. I'm not saying that this game is entirely broken or unplayable, infact, I enjoy playing it despite it's many glaring flaws. However, this game could've really been something special had Capcom taken the time to play test it further and addressed the flaws within the survivor AI, side mission prompts, and boss battles.
Anyway, what say YOU?
I'll go first, as the whole basis of my creation of this thread was inspired by me picking up 'Dead Rising' for a quick play just last night. I know this game is old as ****, but it was $5 and it's 'pick up and play' simplicity fits my schedule perfectly, as I don't have the free time to go getting absorbed in a 50+ hour long game like I'd like to right now.
DEAD RISING
On paper this game is everything a fan of Romero and Fulci films (like myself) could ever ask for, but once you start playing it it quickly becomes apparent that it's nothing more than a diamond encrusted turd.
Small town, zombie outbreak, military quarantine, investigative journalist, shopping mall filled with survivors, 3 days to uncover the truth behind the outbreak.
Sounds cool, right? It is. Until the gameplay starts.
Jesus Christ....Where to begin? I guess I'll just list the flaws as I noticed them.
The text display - The game has a cast of ****ty voice actors who, during cutscenes, lend their voices to the characters in a laughably absurd manner to drive the story along. A lot of people have knocked the voice acting for how forced it all seems, but being a huge fan of 80s B movies within the genre, I really don't mind the bad voice acting at all.
What I do mind is that the characters cease talking once cutscenes are over, and instead you're left with text boxes that appear to read dialogue from when interacting with them. Why is this a problem? Because the text is so ****ing small that you can barely read it. Seriously, you'll go crosseyed trying to decipher this cryptic bull****.
Everytime a character interacts with you it's like a trip to the ****ing eye doctor to read the sight chart.
Otis - Since their inception, video games have had a longstanding love affair with annoying characters, but this needy ****wrinkle would take the gold medal if being a pesky prick were an olympic event.
Dude gives you a transceiver at the beginning of the game to keep in touch with you while you're venturing around the mall so that he can call you and give you information about what area you're in, tell you key locations within that area, and give you vital information about side missions.
Sounds like a perfect gameplay mechanic on paper, right? Wrong.
Within 10 minutes of recieving this transceiver (which the game forces you to take), this calcified **** knuckle quickly reveals his needy nature. Mother****er is CONSTANTLY calling you up at the most inopportune times (usually when you're making your way through an incredibly dense sea of zombies, or fighting a life and death battle with one of the games bosses) to blabber about the most rudimentary bull**** you can possibly think of.
Example : You enter the food court. Otis calls. You answer.
Otis : "Frank! You're in the food court! You can find food here!"
You have the option of irgnoring this ****'s calls, but your transceiver's ringtone is incredibly annoying, so it's best to just answer and get it over with. But that's not all. When you answer this piss stain's calls you're completely vulnerable to enemy attacks, because you put away your weapon to hold the transceiver to your ****ing ear.
If you get hit or intentionally hang up while on the line with him, the call drops, and he rings you back 2 seconds later. When you answer it, he gives you **** for hanging up on him in the first place and it takes him twice as long to say what he was originally going to say before that zombie bit your balls off.
Then there's the scoops, or sidequests that he calls you about, again, at the most inopportune times. You'll be hung up on a meat hook and being carved alive with butcher knives by one of the game's bosses, and this cantankerous **** wart will call you up going : "Frank! There's some lady barricaded in the jewelry store!"
Dude calls me up more than every girlfriend I've ever had in my entire life combined.
Survivor AI - Throughout the course of the game you will encounter a plethora of helpless survivors that the game will reward you for escourting to safety. The catch? They're all dumber than a bag of ****ing hammers.
You'll save them from whatever situation you found them in, they'll join your party, and you'll begin the process of taking them back to the safe room only to have to stop every 5 ****ing feet to save them because they ran directly into a pack of 50 zombies and naturally have no way to defend themselves.
So far, I've only successfully rescued two survivors, and that's only because the fat ****s were hanging out on the roof at the beginning of the game, well away from any zombie threats.
And I'm actually beginning to regret rescuing them, because all these obese ****heads do is sit in the safe room and cry 24/****ing 7. The game is forcing me to listen to these ****s sob and moan until help arrives. You'd think they'd settle the **** down now that I saved their goddamn lives and all, but no - They're still just as upset as they were when I found the assh*les.
Boss Battles - Fighting any boss in this game is similar to injecting yourself with that rage virus from '28 days later.' You never seem to have the proper weapons or health items when you really need them, and the bosses almost always have an arsenal of **** to kill you with. I'm talking shotguns, dual chainsaws, motorcycles, shopping carts armed with pitchforks, knives, and meat cleavers, and even a ****ing humvee with a goddamn mini-gun attached to it.
Meanwhile, what do I have? An apple, a head of cabbage, and a goddamn shower head.
NO FREE ROAMING - This game sells itself as a 'free roam' or "go anywhere, do anything' type of sandbox affair, and it is, unless you actually want to beat it. If you want to beat it, you have to stick solely to the main case files and be where the case tells you to be at the exact time it tells you to be there, and an hour goes by in-game-time so quickly, that you rarely have time to even stock up on items, let alone explore this damn mall.
Sure, there's an infinite mode, where it truly is free roaming for however long you want, but you have to beat overtime mode to unlock it, and to unlock overtime mode you have to get the A ending, which means solving the mystery of the outbreak. Which means that by the time I unlock infinite mode I'll be too ****ing bored with the game to even care.
That wraps up the rant. I'm not saying that this game is entirely broken or unplayable, infact, I enjoy playing it despite it's many glaring flaws. However, this game could've really been something special had Capcom taken the time to play test it further and addressed the flaws within the survivor AI, side mission prompts, and boss battles.
Anyway, what say YOU?
my old man ended up chucking the Nintendo out the window ... but that was because my brother would end up taking my goodies in Contra when i'd blatantly shoot the boxes. the old days, lol.
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