Flawed games you wish were fixed

Utsanomiko · Post by **Utsanomiko** » 2005-06-18 03:34pm

SAMAS wrote:
VF5SS wrote:
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 recall reading about RftA. Dreamcast game, I'm pretty sure. Anyway, while Fed vs Zeon is pretty arcade-like, I felt its controls were dynamic enough to give a lot more combat options than Zeonic Front, which always feels too clunky and can't allow the player to turn around fast enough or jump. Switching weapons also wasn't very difficult, especially compared to ZF: tapping the melee button or fire button to quickly switch between them in Fed vs Zeon, while ZF would 'lock' you into a charging attack if you simply got close enough, which sometimes would end up getting you killed because of how awkward and slow the attack was. Fed vs Zeon also made it easier to switch between targets.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2005-06-18 07:34pm

I'd like to post a link to a REALLY Good write up of whats wrong with MOO-III and what can be done to fix it here
**http://www.u.arizona.edu/%7Ejwfische/ga ... r/moo.html

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2005-06-18 08:11pm

Pure Sabacc wrote:
Straha wrote:Rebellion...

So many problems.... yet still a good game...
Hopefully, Empire at War will be a remedy of sorts.

Ooh, do say more... I got Rebellion when it came out, expecting this wonderful, highly immersive RTS... Then it turns out dull and horribly disappointing.

Lord Pounder · Post by **Lord Pounder** » 2005-06-18 09:10pm

Deus Ex: Invisible War. The original was easily the best game i've ever played yet sequal sucked for one reason, it was designed as a console game 1st and the PC version was an after thought. If they'd simply used an updated version of the original there'd have been no problems and DE:IW would have WTFPWNED.

Civil War Man · Post by **Civil War Man** » 2005-06-18 09:13pm

This has been mentioned before, but here are the games I'd want fixed:

KOTOR 2, KOTOR 2, and...um...oh yeah, KOTOR 2.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2005-06-18 10:19pm

That reminds me : Thief 3. The Xbox killed it. Lets split each level into separate parts you have to move between, with huge load times! Yay!

Metal Fatigue. Obviously never finished, it was a cool game. Half of the later structures were massively unbalanced, and defending underground was really, really easy, but it was so much Mech Stomping fun.

VF5SS · Post by **VF5SS** » 2005-06-18 10:43pm

Well SAMAS, I did find the Sniper Mode useful, but it just reminded me of how sad the game's AI was. You'd be in the GM Cannon sniping away at a Zaku and they'd just get knocked down and then get up and continue shuffling about like nothing happened.

I don't know about Fed Vs Zeon. Sure its better than Zeonic Front, but its still slow and clunk in comparison to any of the Blue Destiny games. The only problem with the Blue Destiny games was that you couldn't block attacks and your melee attacks consisted of tapping the pad in the direction of the enemy while a sprite based beam slash crosses the screen.

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2005-06-18 10:50pm

Empire at War:
http://www.lucasarts.com/games/swempireatwar/

Anyways, I would fix KOTOR 2 first and foremost. A complete overhaul of the second half of the game is necissary.

Drooling Iguana · Post by **Drooling Iguana** » 2005-06-18 11:26pm

Omikron: The Nomad Soul. Either fix the FPS and fighting game bits or leave them out (and it seems like Dreamfall is falling into this same trap

). Have the body-swapping actually affect gameplay beyond changing a couple of stats around and giving you an extra inventory item or two. Possibly have certain hosts become uncooperative when you tried to do something that they wouldn't normally do, or have you be able to use skills and knowledge posessed by the person you were currently inhabiting in certain situations. Certainly give the NPCs varying responses depending on what kind of body you were using (the ones in the game couldn't even tell your gender.)

Also, make it a little bit easier to get around in the later portions of the game. Being able to call a slider at any time in the first city-section was really convenient, but they were completely unavailable at the end.

Datana · Post by **Datana** » 2005-06-19 04:27am

White Haven wrote:...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.

Remember that most of the reason for the second disc's state was because Square rushed the development team and forced them to wrap up well ahead of schedule. If they hadn't done that, we might have actually played through areas like the Soylent System and Mass Driver instead of simply reading about them. I wouldn't put much hope into Xenosaga Episode V, either; partway through XS Episode II, numerous members of the XS staff that had worked on XG were sacked (Takahashi [the director of both XS1 and XG] and Soraya [the storywriter for XS1 and XG] being chief amongst these).

As for difficult fights, how about the back-to-back battles with Amphysbaena and Opiomorphus? Your fuel was usually depleted after the first, and the second could really knock off the HP, leaving you with no means to heal up unless you brought Chu-Chu along. There was also the first fight against Redrum under Nortune, who would repeatedly kill off members of the party to heal its own HP and then would confuse any survivors (so that they couldn't revive their teammates). Calamity was easy by comparison to these -- just make sure to Wild Smile it regularly and it'll miss 2/3s of its attacks.

As for my own choice for flawed game, I'll second Deus Ex: Invisible War, for much the same reasons that Lord Pounder mentioned. If it weren't designed as a console game first (even ignoring the rushed development cycle), it might have actually been decent.

Chief amongst the problems were the tiny areas -- after some of the missions from the first game (Liberty Island, Hell's Kitchen, Undersea Laboratory), DX2 felt positively claustrophobic. It seemed that every few steps you would hit another loading zone, and it was always closed-off, interior areas. The small areas were hurt further by the complete lack of "sense of space," and the incredibly long load times. The only place where I felt like the game world was larger than my immediate surroundings was at the passenger terminal of the Cairo airport, where you could look out the window of the arcology and see slums stretching for miles. Too bad that when you actually went down there, the slums seemed just as closed-in and limited as the arcology you just came from.

Signs of consolification even reached minor areas of the game, like the interface. Fonts were huge and text blocks were short (so that they might be easily read on a TV -- things like the multiple-paragraph long e-mails and whole book chapters from the first game are gone). The HUD was an utter mess of wasted space, with shiny "widgets" that did nothing but obscure your view and hide useful information. Inventory management was simplified in a bad way -- all items take up the same amount of space, and had awkward controls. You moved things around in the inventory by clicking the item once to select it, then clicking the target location twice -- this would make sense on a console controller, but PC users with their mice expect drag-and-drop. Heck, everything was point-and-click -- part of the charm of the original was that you had to type out names and passwords yourself, making it seem a bit more real.

You'd think that Ion Storm would have realized the mistakes they made for this game and applied those lessons towards Thief III, but instead they repeated the exact same problems.

Lord Revan · Post by **Lord Revan** » 2005-06-19 06:16am

Pure Sabacc wrote:Empire at War:
http://www.lucasarts.com/games/swempireatwar/

shouldn't we at least wait until the game is out?

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2005-06-19 09:56am

Lord Revan wrote:
Pure Sabacc wrote:Empire at War:
http://www.lucasarts.com/games/swempireatwar/
shouldn't we at least wait until the game is out?

Oh no, I wasnt complaining about it.
Exonerate seemed to want more info on what I had mentioned before.

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2005-06-19 10:24am

A freind gave me B&W for my birthday this year....

grrr.

I bought MoO3 on advanced order, and have regretted it ever since then.

Molyneux · Post by **Molyneux** » 2005-06-19 01:28pm

How about alter Echo?
Great concept for a game, passable implementation for the most part, with a very nice minigame-ish special attack mode...

But the combat system clearly could have been a LOT better. I was expecting to be a freakin' cuisinart in sword mode, a TANK in gun-mode (heck, that's what he looks like), and Solid Snake-ish in stealth mode.

Instead, we got a mediocre sword-fighter (button-mashing...and it felt a little clunky, too), a gun-mode that, frankly, STUNK (no defensive ability, and it took FOREVER to kill anything with the gun...not to mention the alternate abilities were just weird. I stayed away from gun-mode as much as possible), and a stealth mode that was admittedly fun (jumping on enemies' heads and smashin' their brains out, yay!) but still had room for improvement.

Basically, when it was easy, it was cake...and when it wasn't easy, it was too freakin' hard due to the aforementioned clunky combat.

Jalinth · Post by **Jalinth** » 2005-06-19 01:37pm

The Yosemite Bear wrote:
I bought MoO3 on advanced order, and have regretted it ever since then.

MOO3 isn't salvageable. It bit hard.

Utsanomiko · Post by **Utsanomiko** » 2005-06-19 02:02pm

Though I do wish Master of Orion 2 would allow you to have more than a fixed amount of blueprints for starships. I like to have a mix of different frigate armaments, missile destroyers & multi-role destroyers, light and heavy cruisers, and the like, and that's just hard to manage when the game only accounts slots for one plan per type. Otherwise you keep having to recreate new plans everytime and I kinda like having uniformity.

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2005-06-19 07:54pm

Well, as far as ships go in MOO3, I do love just how much you can custom tailor your ships. Problem is getting them together, the whole making a 'Task Force' with so many of one type, so many of another, so many of a third, is down right maddening...

I Just can't put 18 ships together that are all Battle ships, no, can't have that. Plus, if one little ships gets killed off, it is a F***ing pain to renforce your group, you have to disband the WHOLE taskforce, wait GOD knows how many turns for your ships to come back ((usually between 4 and

) and THEN you can rebuild the force to put in a new ship.

Actually, the worse thing is how totally overpowered Missiles are... You can build huge armadas of Battleships with mega bease and the rest. but a single planet with heavy Missile bases can blow it all to Hell if your AI doesn't fire Point defense guns in time...

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2005-06-19 10:09pm

The new version of Sid Meier's Pirates! could use a little work. It's a great game, but there are a few things that could be fixed. Like a little more variety in the fight sequences, and some more skins (gets boring having to fight Baron Raymondo every single time you want some info on your family). And the ability to REMAP YOUR FUCKING CONTROLS. I'm playing it on a laptop- I don't have a number pad. That's not a problem for the rest of the game but it renders the dancing sequences, even with the dance-enhancing items, nearly impossible. So I retire a pirate and he's killed all the other famous pirates, found all the treasures, reunited his family, is the wealthiest man in the Caribbean and a Duke of two or three nations yet he's a 54 year old virgin. Gah. I just pretend he's been nailing the barmaid the whole time.

SPOOFE · Post by **SPOOFE** » 2005-06-20 02:31am

I'm going to nominate Half-Life 2. Now, the flaws in this game didn't break it (thankfully), but they WERE really lame and obvious. Chief among them was the random cone of fire... come on, I thought we left this game mechanic behind with the '90s, but no, they had to artificially inflate the game's difficulty because they couldn't get the AI quite as smart as they wanted. Lame, lame, lame.

The guns were sucky... take the assault rifle. The clips are the size of an egg, yet Gordon can only carry three of them? He should have been able to tote around a dozen, but no.... yet another way to artificially inflate the difficulty.

Don't even get me started on the retarded crossbow that fired glowing steel rebar lengths....

wautd · Post by **wautd** » 2005-06-20 05:19am

- MoO3: enough said already

- Crusader: No Regret: Good game but I really missed the shopping level between the missions like you had in No Remorse

- XCom Aftermath: good game, great atmosphere but I really missed the fact that you couldnt enter buildings or blow everything up like in the older games

- Star Wars Rebellion: a descent interface would have made things sooo much better

- Actraiser (SNES): if you ever made it to the final boss, you know what I mean

Post by **The Yosemite Bear** » 2005-06-20 05:20am

vampire bloodlines....

enjoying it so much even though it's so buggy

Morilore · Post by **Morilore** » 2005-06-20 07:21am

Star Trek: Dominion War(s?). I loved the game. But the game hated me. Someone needs to learn of an arcane art known as "quality control."

I'll echo RSIII Rebel Strike. I think those games got worse as they progressed. Rogue Squadron came up with an original plot and fun missions, Rogue Leader tried to emulate the movies, and in Rebel Strike, they just seemed to give up.

The first Diablo. I. Want. To. RUN!

Star Trek: Dominion War.

Age of Mythology. Excellent concept and gameplay, now make graphics that don't hurt my eyes.

Zelda: Wind Waker. More dungeons plzkthxbai.

Star Trek: Dominion War.

Star Trek: Dominion War.

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2005-06-20 07:30am

Morilore wrote:Age of Mythology. Excellent concept and gameplay, now make graphics that don't hurt my eyes.

What's wrong with the graphics? I think they're good.

wautd · Post by **wautd** » 2005-06-20 07:43am

Max Payne 2. Is it finished already?

Ubiquitous · Post by **Ubiquitous** » 2005-06-20 08:13am

Can't believe that BOTF hasn't been mentioned. I have still spent thousands of hours on that game, but it was so flawed and the slow down later on in the game makes it almost unplayable. The final straw was [whilst using a mod, admittably] having a huge space battle take over two hours to load ... for ONE turn of battle!