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I was batting about my fileserver the other day, and found my stash of old, 386-driven games. I've still got my syndicate cd, it turns out! Anyway, I had a bash on some of them, and using Nostalgia to combat Poor Interface Design, I was having a good time. I DO like some games, after all. :p

However, they've all got horrible, glaringly obvious flaws. Some of them would be good today, from a design perspective, if not for certain decisions, or bugs, or elements of design. I'm sure we've all played games like this in our time, so I'll just share one: Emperor of the Fading Suns.

Sure, it rips off WH40k. But its got an economy in there, a functional production system from ore to singularities, a political system that actually WORKS, heaps of units and an interesting take on technology. Only game I've ever played where I could research powered armour troops, then realise I'm not producing anywhere near enough 'C-steel' to mass produce them, and spend the better part of a decade industrialising a new planet to produce my army. It was fun.

However, it's crippled by an extremely random combat engine, and a terrible turn-based implementation that forces you to manually check all your guys on move orders have, actually, moved. The economy, while interesting from a production standpoint, isn't actually functional: prices vary as you buy, but it's very difficult to actually make a profit selling shit. Stuff like singularities sell for a lot, but they don't sell for enough to even cover your raw materials costs. Further, the 'merchants' never bother to refil the market on my planet, so my money (all millions of it) is basically useless.

Anyway, it's heaps of fun. The turns start to drag out as you take over planets, it's quite surprisingly hard, but it's satisfying. It also has orbital bombardment!

Has anyone else come across games like this? Games that could be great, if not for one or two broken elements?

A game with a great promise but with a few glaring faults in Black & White. The game has a good interface, if a bit minimalistic, and could have been a great game. The Creature had excellent AI and was really a nice idea.

However that very same Creature was exactly what could have been better about the game. Here we have this gigantic, well eventually gigantic, creature with good AI, easily a selling point for the game, and what do we do with it? We neuter its AI in level 1, let the player train his Creature to be useful in level 2. So far not too bad. However in level 3 it's locked away for most of the level, level 4 is just a plain nightmare, and in level 5 the creature is cursed and basically out of action. So we have ONE decent level to actually play with the Creature. It would be forgivable is there had been a sandbox mode to play around with the Creature in and try to make gigantic villages. But no.

Good idea, bad execution.

MoO3. It just had so much potential, and it got so bogged down in detail and micromanaging. It's the one and only game I have bought for PC where I ended up going "this could have been so much better..."

Really? In B&W, was creature AI broken in level 1? Is THAT why I couldn't teach it all the shit I could teach it in multi? Wow. You're right, it had great promise...


I'm not sure about MoO3 though. If it had worked, it woulda been great, but it's not just a bit broken: the game was massively overdesigned. I'da been happy with the MoO idea (industry/sliders etc) with a new frontend, but we got an utterly mystifying game.

F1 manager.

Every single system I ever tried it on, it crashed whenever you tried to sign or resign an engine manufacturer. I contacted EA about it - "update your drivers"... Sure, when the problem exists on 10 different machines, I'm sure its just the drivers.

The problem is, that in order to complete a season, you need to resign your engine manufacturer at the end of the season... So. You can imagine how that worked out. A fucking management game where you couldn't even complete a single season due to a fucking bug that EA NEVER acknowledged.

Rebellion...


So many problems.... yet still a good game...

Straha wrote:Rebellion...


So many problems.... yet still a good game...

Hopefully, Empire at War will be a remedy of sorts.

Fallout 2 -- yes, the game as shipped was still damn good. But BIS was forced to ship six months early, meaning that they didn't have time to implement a bunch of things or really fix the bugs.

Games which were flawed but otherwise had good ideas or potential, that I can recall:

Star Wars Galaxies. I'm convinced this was the kind of project that looked great as a game design outline, but must have been poorly-planned later in design or rushed in testing when details were fleshed out (such as the profession system, combat skills, pvp, Jedi, etc etc). The factions were moronically made equal across the board, making the Galactic Civil War little more than 'Red Army vs Blue Army', and even resource-gathering favored monopolies and non-hardcore crafters. The live team's solution to deal with so many unsatisfactory and incomplete gameplay choices has been to simply gut the game and remove/break as many gameplay choices (functional or non-functional) as possible. The only times I've felt like going back to SW:G I depressingly recalled that the Expert profession were a rewardless pain to grind through, and even starting a simple life of moisture farming for my ex-BH main would mean moving all my vaporators every few days to another cluster, and selling the water cheaply because Tattooine water isn't the valuable type of water, except perhaps on random high-quality weeks.

Body Harvest. Great idea for varied gameplay, but with controls almost as clumsy as the game's linear stage layout and awkwardly-timed scripted events. And the dumb & tedious puzzles. You couldn't shoot and move while on foot, swimming was rather dangerous despite the prevalence of large expanses of water, and planes were also too vulnerable compared to cars/trucks/tanks (especially when flying over water). This wouldn't have been as bad if there was a more lenient save system other than at the end of each zone in the level. Body Harvest should have had controls similar to Grand Theft Auto III or True Crime, and the levels a dynamic and fairly open world where the player would secure a single zone/town, and then head for various critical locations (secure the airfield, prevent destruction of dam, restore lighthouse power, etc) to eliminate the local bug infestation and therefore turn the tide and reduce the overall bug infestation. Sort of how the game worked, but relying much less on simple railroaded level design and more on overal strategy and numbers involving territory and objectives. If I ever could get the chance to redo Body Harvest as even a GTA III:SA mod...

Mobile Suit Gundam: Zeonic Front. They sometimes call Gundam 'Japan's Star Trek', but I'm pretty sure ST's game library is more varied than 'decent arcade action' and 'clunky and limited generic squad tactics'. The simple but enjoyable Gundam. Zeonic Front buried its great story and potentially fascinating game snugly into the later. It's either an action game bogged down by too many squad-management and equipment options or it really is a tactical game but is too simplistic and poorly-planned. The pilots in the roster don't simply get their own mobile suits, they get a whole squad with up to two identical nameless pilots to accompany them with identical equipment and weapons. Closest thing available to mixing all those is just deploying with 3 teams, one pilot & suit per team, except the damn things are rediculously vulnerable in the back (you get bonus points for shotting targets in the back and can't be seen, but that also means you can practically lose mobile suits in your unit in one damn shot. Doesn't help that they're also very stupid), and they operate mostly on their own. Want to deply on your MS-07A with two Zaku IIs- one with a rocket launcher and one Ground Type with a machine gun? Tough shit, you're stuck with two clones. But don't worry, the pilots have identical AI/abilities, except in Mobile Suit choices and avialable equipment- just the exact opposite of what I wanted. Oh, and there's no easy way of replaying the campaign missions except in some of their virtual mission forms. Grrr...


That's about it for flawed games with major things being fixed to redeem them. I can think of some good games that had flaws that could have improved their gameplay:

Escape Velocity: Nova (exchanging ships and escorts). Excellent game, looked for it and a potential Windows version like the Holy Grail for years, and bought the full version primarily to be able to capture ships. but one issue and limitation with capturing ships is that it ignores all the cool upgrades you put in. If you've got a souped-up Starjacker and two Terrapin transports and you switch to one of them, your Starjacker becomes the basic version of that model and loses all its stuff, IIRC. And you can't switch back and forth between ships in your fleet easily. Makes it frustrating if you want to customize your fleet or have access to piloting whichever ship you need for the task (battlecruiser, gunships, interceptors, freighter, etc). Also hiring crewmates is too expensive; I'd never keep anything bigger than cargo drones tagging along more than 2-3 systems unless I had a confirmed and specific cargo route I was running with them filled with goods. You can go in the hole so easily with even a pair of low-end freighters tailing you because the damn things charge like 10% of the ships' value per jump. It's better by far to travel around on your own unless that charge is adjusted (I'd cut the daily payment by a big margin but significantly up the down payment. That'd also curb the simplicity of renting a couple of superfreighters and running goods in-system. That in of itself is way too easy).


Blast Corps. Quaint little Nintendo 64 game. I sold it several years ago for about $10, with box and manual. Probably would have held onto it if they had just included a aimple little addition to the Time-Attack gameplay modes after completing a stage: Clear Stage Time Attack. Once you cleared a path for the nuclear transport in a stage, you could then go back and clear all buildings/obstacles in the game. Once that was all done, you gained access to Time-Attack, which tested and ranked your time in clearing a path for the transport. This could be done over and over to your hearts content, and yet clearing out the *entire* state was an aspect of gameplay accessible only ONCE. Why didn't they allow you to replay the stage in clearing it out of all buildings? You couldn't even return to the stages without the damn time-attack timer and the transport running its gamut. Some of the most fun parts were the liesurely-paced demolishing of buildings, the search for hidden buildings and goodies, pullings stunts, and massive damage you could wreck at your own pace.

Galaxies, of course... Oh, I could go on for hours...

KotOR2, 'nuff said...



Blast Corps was a fun little one, though.

Actually, I think KotOR 1 could have used some improvements, though mainly by making it no so much of a typical Bioware D&D adventure. Sorry, but I like my Star Wars a little more Star Wars-like than 'Baldur's Gate in Space'.

That, and change the gaming engine. Gurps has much more interesting variety, and 6D would provide barrels of fun.

Utsanomiko wrote: Mobile Suit Gundam: Zeonic Front. They sometimes call Gundam 'Japan's Star Trek', but I'm pretty sure ST's game library is more varied than 'decent arcade action' and 'clunky and limited generic squad tactics'. The simple but enjoyable Gundam. Zeonic Front buried its great story and potentially fascinating game snugly into the later. It's either an action game bogged down by too many squad-management and equipment options or it really is a tactical game but is too simplistic and poorly-planned. The pilots in the roster don't simply get their own mobile suits, they get a whole squad with up to two identical nameless pilots to accompany them with identical equipment and weapons. Closest thing available to mixing all those is just deploying with 3 teams, one pilot & suit per team, except the damn things are rediculously vulnerable in the back (you get bonus points for shotting targets in the back and can't be seen, but that also means you can practically lose mobile suits in your unit in one damn shot. Doesn't help that they're also very stupid), and they operate mostly on their own. Want to deply on your MS-07A with two Zaku IIs- one with a rocket launcher and one Ground Type with a machine gun? Tough shit, you're stuck with two clones. But don't worry, the pilots have identical AI/abilities, except in Mobile Suit choices and avialable equipment- just the exact opposite of what I wanted. Oh, and there's no easy way of replaying the campaign missions except in some of their virtual mission forms. Grrr...

Yeah it's got a few issues... still a blast to play at times though, especially the mission which recreate's Norris vs. the 8th MS team.. nothing like tkaing it on and doing BETTER than the Ace in the show (all MS destroyed using only the saber).

Kotor 2, Fallout 2

Xenon, for the Amiga.

Absolutely loved that game, but for fuck's sake, could you please find a way to somehow replenish the measly three lives you get for the whole flippin' game?

Oh, but don't remove the bug where if you die halfway through the second stage of world two, when you reappear, all enemies in the remainder of the stage (aside from the boss) have suddenly disappeared.

~Damien

McNum wrote:A game with a great promise but with a few glaring faults in Black & White. The game has a good interface, if a bit minimalistic, and could have been a great game. The Creature had excellent AI and was really a nice idea.

However that very same Creature was exactly what could have been better about the game. Here we have this gigantic, well eventually gigantic, creature with good AI, easily a selling point for the game, and what do we do with it? We neuter its AI in level 1, let the player train his Creature to be useful in level 2. So far not too bad. However in level 3 it's locked away for most of the level, level 4 is just a plain nightmare, and in level 5 the creature is cursed and basically out of action. So we have ONE decent level to actually play with the Creature. It would be forgivable is there had been a sandbox mode to play around with the Creature in and try to make gigantic villages. But no.

Good idea, bad execution.

Umm, the skirmish mode was there for playing with the creature and making gigantic villages. Granted there were only 3 maps, which was pitiful, but it didn't take long for a large amount of user maps to be created by various websites, half of them were specifically designed to be sandboxes for your creature. I'm replaying it at the moment as I never got round to completing it first time round, and through using the skirmish mode, had my creature using things like the winged doves miracle in land 1, as well as fire balls and lightning.

The problems with the game for me was the colossal amount of micromanagement involved on all sides - training the creature could sometimes be a nightmare, and trying to watch over villages as well and maintain demands was a bitch.

Rogue Squadron III- Rebel Strike. Could have been great, but it was brought down big time. The whole "missions on foot" might have been good if the execution was better, and it played more like Shadows of the Empire for N64 and less like something the developers threw in at the last minute, but it wasn't. Not only that, the levels seemed uninspired relative to RSII, which had it's own fair share of tedious missions.

And I'd second whoever said Blast Corps, but because after getting to the part where you had to get the platinum metals by finishing the course in some impossibly short time, I looked back and would have liked to see more variety in the levels and various puzzles inside of them. I was a little curious as to what they would do if the transport was headed straight toward a cliff.

El Moose Monstero wrote: The problems with the game for me was the colossal amount of micromanagement involved on all sides - training the creature could sometimes be a nightmare, and trying to watch over villages as well and maintain demands was a bitch.

Gods yes, if you tried to look after your creature, your village suffered if you tried looking after your village your Creature suffered, if you tried to do both you never advanced in the level. Either way you where screwed. What might have been handy was some warning when your creature was about to do something, say you set parmeters. (so if you wanted a nice creature it warned you when he was about to eat a person...) Just so you could turn you attention away from the creature and to the villages without having your creature start a downward spiral into evil.

Utsanomiko wrote:They sometimes call Gundam 'Japan's Star Trek', but I'm pretty sure ST's game library is more varied than 'decent arcade action' and 'clunky and limited generic squad tactics'.

Speaking of the decent action games, remember Gundam Side Story: Rise from the Ashes? Its was like Bandai was sayin', "Ok, we have some cool 3d models of Mobile Suits and there's this new console out... LET'S GAME!" Oh sure the game had a decent engine, but it would've benefitted from being more like the old Gundam Side Story: Blue Destiny games for Saturn. One of the things that really annoyed me about Rise was that you couldn't dash backwards. The double tap down instead made the MS crouch for some reason. The Sniper Scope was also pretty useless and wouldn't have been an issue if the game didn't have so much fog. And then there's the game speed. Blue Destiny had Mobile Suits dashing around the battlefield in seconds (this might be because the game was optimised for use with the Virtual On Twin Sticks). Rise on the other hand was just slow. The GMs moved like old men swinging their canes in close combat. Honeslty I think some of the older game engines like Zeta Gundam and Gundam: Char's Counterattack for PSX would be a better base from a new game. At least those games gave you access to several weapons at once unlike the new Renppou Vs. Zeon engine, which is far to arcade like for my tastes.

KOTOR 2 and B&W

Black and White, so much fun, so hard to play.

MoO3 - Definately. That thing needed to be demolished and rebuilt as MoO 2+, which had it right. It's sad when you by a 4x game, play it for six hours and STILL have not even seen the combat system once. Screw it, they added far too much complexity. MOO1 had star stystems. MOO2 had star systems, up to 5 planets a system. MOO3 has 10+ planets, moons for each planet, continents for each planet, CITIES for each continent. That's wrong. Just plain wrong.

UFO:AFtermath - It could have been the most amazing X-COM spiritual successor ever. But uh... for some reason, your squad peaks at 7 people, and there's no point in splitting them up. Ever. Your best bet was to charge aliens like klingons hopped up on goofballs.

Metal Gear Solid 2 - Plot? PLOT?! PLOOOOOOOOTTTTTT!!!!!!

VF5SS wrote:

Utsanomiko wrote:They sometimes call Gundam 'Japan's Star Trek', but I'm pretty sure ST's game library is more varied than 'decent arcade action' and 'clunky and limited generic squad tactics'.

Speaking of the decent action games, remember Gundam Side Story: Rise from the Ashes? Its was like Bandai was sayin', "Ok, we have some cool 3d models of Mobile Suits and there's this new console out... LET'S GAME!" Oh sure the game had a decent engine, but it would've benefitted from being more like the old Gundam Side Story: Blue Destiny games for Saturn. One of the things that really annoyed me about Rise was that you couldn't dash backwards. The double tap down instead made the MS crouch for some reason. The Sniper Scope was also pretty useless and wouldn't have been an issue if the game didn't have so much fog. And then there's the game speed. Blue Destiny had Mobile Suits dashing around the battlefield in seconds (this might be because the game was optimised for use with the Virtual On Twin Sticks). Rise on the other hand was just slow. The GMs moved like old men swinging their canes in close combat. Honeslty I think some of the older game engines like Zeta Gundam and Gundam: Char's Counterattack for PSX would be a better base from a new game. At least those games gave you access to several weapons at once unlike the new Renppou Vs. Zeon engine, which is far to arcade like for my tastes.

I have RftA. It was fun, but yeah, slow as hell. Although I seemed to get a lot more use out of the sniper mode than you did.

I heard that the Japanese version had a bonus disc players could get that basically let them get their asses kicked by the original Unholy Trio(Gundam, Guntank, and Guncannon).

Xenogears I loved the original's storyline. I loved the original's fun rpg elements and unique interface. But for fuck's sake fix the balance of the enemys' difficulty. Almost all the enemies in the entire fucking game were either too fucking hard or ridiculously simple. Most notably the first boss you face in the caves below the city you start in. You had to spend forever leveling up to finish off what should be a simple fucking fight.

Omega Boost A spectacular shooter for the PS1. All the levels were amazing, and for the most part relatively balanced. But the final boss? Dear gods that fucker was nigh impossible to defeat without using a cheat code. I'd swear I literally spent weeks trying to beat the fucker and every single time i wound up going over the time limit they set. Make that prick easier to beat and you'd have a fantastic shooter.

...Xenogears is a good candidate, but not for the reason you just put out. I don't know what game you were playing, but one and only time I /ever/ did any level-grinding was very late-game to get Fei's last ultradeathblow. Not sure what 'insane difficulty' you're talking about, only really hard boss that I can remember is Balthazar's gear. Anyway, what I'd like to see fixed (And will, in Xenosaga Ep5! YAY!) is...you know...disc two. The 'let's read a narrative' disc.

Xenogears disc 2 certainly needs fixing. Preferably by tearing it to pieces and rewriting everything from the assault on Solaris. Yes, we know they've watched Eva too many times, no need to copy it's shitty ending as well.