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[Glloyd]

Now for an actual peeve: Romanticised Vikings

With their horned helmets and other assorted fictitious cliché's. I really dont like Noble savage characters, and in video games they are basically Noble Savage: the Culture.

That's much less a video game pet peeve then an ingrained popular idea that many have about them as a culture. For longer then any of us have been alive, Vikings have been portrayed as such. It's a shame, and it's really annoying whitewashing, but it's sadly not just video games. In fact, right at the top of the Viking Wikipedia page, it says:

Popular conceptions of the Vikings often differ from the complex picture that emerges from archaeology and written sources. A romanticised picture of Vikings as noble savages began to take root in the 18th century, and this developed and became widely propagated during the 19th-century Viking revival. The received views of the Vikings as violent brutes or intrepid adventurers owe much to the modern Viking myth that had taken shape by the early 20th century. Current popular representations are typically highly clichéd, presenting the Vikings as familiar caricatures.

[nenjin]

Alexandertnt: try batman arkham x series.

Yes you are stronger than anyone, but very vulnerable at the same time.

Cannot really explain it but looks like the best human hero impression in a videogame ever.

I would highly recommend playing it on Hard. At first you'll be like "WTF, too hard." But if you start it on normal, somewhere in the middle of the game combat just kinda becomes a joke. The window for counters is huge, upgrades make it easier to combo, faster and you generally go through 15 guys like they're made of paper.

Hard, your time marks need to be tight. Guys can actually hurt you, even with the upgrades. Guns will fuck your shit up in a hurry. They will in Normal too, but on Hard getting shot with a rifle actually seems semi-believable...whereas on Normal, Bats will take 4 to 5 bursts of fire before he goes down.

Doesn't make you feel any less powerful to play on Hard, but it definitely makes the enemies more dangerous.

[WealthyRadish]

I also think its worse in games that provide rewards for team victory, as some people can see new players as "costing them" something.

That's what I think it boils down to, is when people find that their personal experience is hindered by somebody else.

One of the things that I find very irritating whenever I play a team based game is how easily an 'us vs. them' mentality develops, or I guess 'me vs. you'. Even in a game like TF2, where the team choices are obviously completely arbitrary distinctions, it's extremely common for people to take things personally and get in this mindset. When I get a domination on someone or a particularly impressive/lucky headshot, 80% of the time that person will devote all of their energy towards getting 'revenge', getting increasingly upset if they don't succeed.

It's stupid rivalries like that (which are enforced by TF2's domination system) that really bother me. It's ridiculous to me that some people get as desperate and aggressive as they do over nothing... if I headshot someone, most people practically take it as an open assault on their manhood, when the reality is that they were just another guy on the other team. If we had happened to be on the same team, and they saw me get a headshot like that, they'd probably be happy that a friendly sniper got a headshot. I don't think anyone's dumb enough to consciously invest in the idea of hating the other team or their players in a random pub match, so my guess is it's just an automatic emotional reaction they don't think through.

[itisnotlogical]

One-way rank systems

In Combat Arms, you gain ranks as you win and can only play in servers that allow your rank. The idea is that players of similar skill all end up in the same rooms together.

The thing is, you don't get knocked down for losing. So you end up stuck at a level where you consistently lose. This really sucks if you stop playing for a while and your game rank isn't representative of your skill level anymore.

[Parsely]

Alexandertnt: try batman arkham x series.

Yes you are stronger than anyone, but very vulnerable at the same time.

Cannot really explain it but looks like the best human hero impression in a videogame ever.

I would highly recommend playing it on Hard. At first you'll be like "WTF, too hard." But if you start it on normal, somewhere in the middle of the game combat just kinda becomes a joke. The window for counters is huge, upgrades make it easier to combo, faster and you generally go through 15 guys like they're made of paper.

Hard, your time marks need to be tight. Guys can actually hurt you, even with the upgrades. Guns will fuck your shit up in a hurry. They will in Normal too, but on Hard getting shot with a rifle actually seems semi-believable...whereas on Normal, Bats will take 4 to 5 bursts of fire before he goes down.

Doesn't make you feel any less powerful to play on Hard, but it definitely makes the enemies more dangerous.

In Arkham City there's a gamemode where you play on hard, except it turns off the little flashy warnings that tell you when to counter. Beat the shit out of it plus all the sidequests and it was gloriously difficult. The hardest part was the combat challenges actually. There's one for taking out at least 10 dudes, doing a 50x combo, using all your gadgets, and a few other things, all without getting hit once. Never beat that challenge..

Then after that was I am the Night mode which was the same as previous, except you only had one life.

Didn't even try. Mostly because I was lent the game for a week and had to give it back.

[EnigmaticHat]

Now for an actual peeve: Romanticised Vikings

With their horned helmets and other assorted fictitious cliché's. I really dont like Noble savage characters, and in video games they are basically Noble Savage: the Culture.

I hate video games that involve gunning down hordes of foreigners from places exist in real life.  Probably the worst offender I've encountered is Max Payne 3.  There was a point in that game where I realized it was literally a game about gunning down hordes of brown people for money.  And the game was aware of this, and Max repeatedly explains it to the player throughout the game.

Most of the people you shoot in that game are part of violent gangs, and I still saw Max as just as bad as them.  It is explained to the player at one point that you're in the middle of a fight between nasty poor people and nasty rich people, and have become a hired gun for the rich in a country you don't understand.  Yet somehow Max isn't a villain protagonist, he still gets to be the brooding but well-intentioned noire hero down on his luck.

CoD is bad about this as well.  They'll often use 24 style "but the real villain was an American!" cop outs, but like 24 it doesn't change what the story is fundamentally about.

[Parsely]

..it was literally a game about gunning down hordes of brown people for money.  And the game was aware of this, and Max repeatedly explains it to the player throughout the game.

If I remember correctly, he was hired by some sort of Brazilian crime family as a bodyguard. They live in Brazil so he's employed in Brazil. When a Brazilian gang pisses off said crime family, Max has to go kill them because they kidnap one of the family members. He super fucks up and by the end of the game the entire family is dead. Not only does he shoot gangsters, he also kills cops. In fact he mostly kills cops and mercenaries and I think revolutionaries of some kind at one point. The gangsters stop being the main mooks partway through the game.

He shoots foreign people because he's on the run for shooting white people when he lived in New York (the part where you're in a flash back in Brooklyn), and his friend got him a job working for that crime family (but in the end it was some sort of convoluted set up).

So yeah he kills brown people for money. There's also games about killing white people for money. I think you're missing something somewhere. Max is an antihero, an alcoholic, and he's terrible at his job too. His principal ends up being killed because he was drinking on the job. You're supposed to despise him as much if not more than his enemies, because he's a scumbag and a coward, who can't live with the mistakes he made in the past. He's a loser, and he's white, in another country. He gets beaten just for looking like a tourist.

EDIT: He's well intentioned, but throughout the game characters repeatedly tell him to fuck off because they don't want his help, and when he does help, he just ends up making things worse, because all he knows how to do is kill people. And he reminds the player of this in his snide narrations (which are supposed to annoy you). The whole point of the game actually the entire series was to hang a lampshade on that type of protagonist.

[scrdest]

..it was literally a game about gunning down hordes of brown people for money.  And the game was aware of this, and Max repeatedly explains it to the player throughout the game.

EDIT: He's well intentioned, but throughout the game characters repeatedly tell him to fuck off because they don't want his help, and when he does help, he just ends up making things worse, because all he knows how to do is kill people. And he reminds the player of this in his snide narrations (which are supposed to annoy you). The whole point of the game actually the entire series was to hang a lampshade on that type of protagonist.

Uh, no. The first two games were just straight-up noir, with the first one having a Nordic apocalyptic theme going on. And he really didn't have much in terms of bad decisions to deal with - his family got killed because his wife accidentally stumbled upon something, then he got framed for killing his best friend. And what might be an ancient secret society had been involved.

The second one, arguably. The events are pretty much the fallout from the decisions made in the first game, but again, in the first game it was one man against Mafia and a megacorp, all the while being chased by police.

[EnigmaticHat]

Max is a heroic (sorry, anti-hero, but those are basically the same thing these days) character archetype played completely straight.  He is every noire protagonist ever, and he's meant to be.  This has been true since the first game.  And the whole point of that kind of noire protagonist is that he's a jaded and beaten down man in a crappy world, but through it all he still has a strong sense of justice.  Even though he may do bad things and fuck up, he's still the good guy.  If its a more cynical noire he may not be A good guy, but he'll still be THE good guy because the other guy will be way worse.

Max Payne 3 stays true to this formula even though Max isn't the good guy.  He feels awful about his dead family, he repeatedly puts himself in stupid danger because a "dame" is at risk and actually cites that as the reason, and he constantly calls out injustices, even those he commits.  And then he goes out and shoots a hundred Brazilian crooks/paramilitaries (and according to you, apparently cops*) in a day because it serves the interests of his client.

Do you see the problem?  In, say... I'm actually struggling to think of a game where you shoot a bunch of white Americans for money and aren't a villain protagonist.  Like, I can't even make my point because of this.  Someone want to help?  The closest game I can think of is Dues Ex but you actually are a villain protagonist at the start of that series, you just don't realize it.

And no, in the first game he was tracking down people who invented an extremely dangerous drug that directly resulted in the death of his wife and infant son.  He was pursuing a just goal whatever he may have done along the way.  So no, I don't see the 1st and 3rd games as equivalent.  No idea what happened in the 2nd game though.

*I quit during the graveyard flashback due to an entirely different pet peeve.  So I missed the second half or whatever of the game.  But it sounds like it gets worse instead of better.

[scrdest]

And no, in the first game he was tracking down people who invented an extremely dangerous drug that directly resulted in the death of his wife and infant son.  He was pursuing a just goal whatever he may have done along the way.  So no, I don't see the 1st and 3rd games as equivalent.  No idea what happened in the 2nd game though.

Actually, he only went after them after his family died. His wife, working as a D.A. assistant or secretary or something, don't remember, stumbled upon the files that implicated the company which made the drug and didn't realize what it was, and the CEO of the corporation decided to drop some armed junkies at her (and Max's) house.

Only afterwards he joins the DEA, for the purpose of going after the people responsible.

[Virtz]

I'm not really sure what people expect of Max Payne. He does what he does really well, and it's kind of hard to engage in diplomacy with people who throw molotovs at the sight of you. "He didn't single-handedly hold off an army of 100+ people going after his client's uncooperative family? Pff, what a loser!"

Do you see the problem?  In, say... I'm actually struggling to think of a game where you shoot a bunch of white Americans for money and aren't a villain protagonist.  Like, I can't even make my point because of this.  Someone want to help?  The closest game I can think of is Dues Ex but you actually are a villain protagonist at the start of that series, you just don't realize it.

Hitman? Particularly in Blood Money. And he's a Romanian-made clone, apparently working for a British agency.

[scrdest]

I'm not really sure what people expect of Max Payne. He does what he does really well, and it's kind of hard to engage in diplomacy with people who throw molotovs at the sight of you. "He didn't single-handedly hold off an army of 100+ people going after his client's uncooperative family? Pff, what a loser!"

Do you see the problem?  In, say... I'm actually struggling to think of a game where you shoot a bunch of white Americans for money and aren't a villain protagonist.  Like, I can't even make my point because of this.  Someone want to help?  The closest game I can think of is Dues Ex but you actually are a villain protagonist at the start of that series, you just don't realize it.

Hitman? Particularly in Blood Money. And he's a Romanian-made clone, apparently working for a British agency.

Villain protagonist, a bit. Though he mostly goes for horrible people.

[EnigmaticHat]

And no, in the first game he was tracking down people who invented an extremely dangerous drug that directly resulted in the death of his wife and infant son.  He was pursuing a just goal whatever he may have done along the way.  So no, I don't see the 1st and 3rd games as equivalent.  No idea what happened in the 2nd game though.

Actually, he only went after them after his family died. His wife, working as a D.A. assistant or secretary or something, don't remember, stumbled upon the files that implicated the company which made the drug and didn't realize what it was, and the CEO of the corporation decided to drop some armed junkies at her (and Max's) house.

Only afterwards he joins the DEA, for the purpose of going after the people responsible.

I... did you read what you quoted?  I think its pretty implicit when I say that he's going after the people who killed his family, that he's going after them BECAUSE they killed his family.  Also, they died in the prologue.  So by definition anything that happens in the game, happens after junkies killed Max's family.  I'm not sure why that would require explicitly stating.

I'm not really sure what people expect of Max Payne. He does what he does really well, and it's kind of hard to engage in diplomacy with people who throw molotovs at the sight of you. "He didn't single-handedly hold off an army of 100+ people going after his client's uncooperative family? Pff, what a loser!"

Do you see the problem?  In, say... I'm actually struggling to think of a game where you shoot a bunch of white Americans for money and aren't a villain protagonist.  Like, I can't even make my point because of this.  Someone want to help?  The closest game I can think of is Dues Ex but you actually are a villain protagonist at the start of that series, you just don't realize it.

Hitman? Particularly in Blood Money. And he's a Romanian-made clone, apparently working for a British agency.

Yeah but the Hitman guy is a villain protagonist.  At least I'm pretty sure.

As for the first part... heh.  Its especially funny because all the places people get grabbed, there should be other security (or in one particularly idiotic case, the dude walked into a gang HQ with a bag of money).  But noooo, its all Max's fault.

Anyway, my argument isn't that Max is the devil.  He got sort of dragged along at the start.  He 100% should have walked away when he realized his boss was a mass-murderer whose entire family was utterly doomed.  But more to the point, when you write a story you get to decide all those little details.  The point is the place we got to was killing hundreds of increasingly non-villainous Brazilians for increasingly non-heroic reasons.  And they Max have talked about how awful it was, but for all that the people Max killed were faceless, characterless, storyless goons while he got to be a sympathetic brooding anti-hero.

Edit: Oh, and I was accusing the game developers and audience of racism/xenophobia, based on the idea that they were more OK with Max being the good guy, because people are used to seeing the foreign hordes gunned down in FPSs.  And media as a whole.  AK-47s let you tell who the villain is after all.

[scrdest]

And no, in the first game he was tracking down people who invented an extremely dangerous drug that directly resulted in the death of his wife and infant son.  He was pursuing a just goal whatever he may have done along the way.  So no, I don't see the 1st and 3rd games as equivalent.  No idea what happened in the 2nd game though.

Actually, he only went after them after his family died. His wife, working as a D.A. assistant or secretary or something, don't remember, stumbled upon the files that implicated the company which made the drug and didn't realize what it was, and the CEO of the corporation decided to drop some armed junkies at her (and Max's) house.

Only afterwards he joins the DEA, for the purpose of going after the people responsible.

I... did you read what you quoted?  I think its pretty implicit when I say that he's going after the people who killed his family, that he's going after them BECAUSE they killed his family.  Also, they died in the prologue.  So by definition anything that happens in the game, happens after junkies killed Max's family.  I'm not sure why that would require explicitly stating.

I'm not really sure what people expect of Max Payne. He does what he does really well, and it's kind of hard to engage in diplomacy with people who throw molotovs at the sight of you. "He didn't single-handedly hold off an army of 100+ people going after his client's uncooperative family? Pff, what a loser!"

Do you see the problem?  In, say... I'm actually struggling to think of a game where you shoot a bunch of white Americans for money and aren't a villain protagonist.  Like, I can't even make my point because of this.  Someone want to help?  The closest game I can think of is Dues Ex but you actually are a villain protagonist at the start of that series, you just don't realize it.

Hitman? Particularly in Blood Money. And he's a Romanian-made clone, apparently working for a British agency.

Yeah but the Hitman guy is a villain protagonist.  At least I'm pretty sure.

As for the first part... heh.  Its especially funny because all the places people get grabbed, there should be other security (or in one particularly idiotic case, the dude walked into a gang HQ with a bag of money).  But noooo, its all Max's fault.

Anyway, my argument isn't that Max is the devil.  He got sort of dragged along at the start.  He 100% should have walked away when he realized his boss was a mass-murderer whose entire family was utterly doomed.  But more to the point, when you write a story you get to decide all those little details.  The point is the place we got to was killing hundreds of increasingly non-villainous Brazilians for increasingly non-heroic reasons.  And they Max have talked about how awful it was, but for all that the people Max killed were faceless, characterless, storyless goons while he got to be a sympathetic brooding anti-hero.

Edit: Oh, and I was accusing the game developers and audience of racism/xenophobia, based on the idea that they were more OK with Max being the good guy, because people are used to seeing the foreign hordes gunned down in FPSs.  And media as a whole.  AK-47s let you tell who the villain is after all.

Sorry, I've been a bit confused when I posted this, having very recently had woken up. Brainfart. I read that as implying his family was targetted because he was going after them, for some reason.

Hitman is not a straightforward Villain Protagonist - he's more on the, uh, antier side of anti-hero. There are very few canon instances of him killing innocents (and even then it was because they would rat him out), and even when it appears to, the victims are actually bad guys. And he actually saves some people.

I think it was implied in one of the games the Agency he works for is used as an independent contractor for law enforcement for taking out criminals that couldn't be prosecuted normally due to them bribing the jury and the like (discounting Absolution, for being canon rape).

[Culise]

I hate video games that involve gunning down hordes of foreigners from places exist in real life.  Probably the worst offender I've encountered is Max Payne 3.  There was a point in that game where I realized it was literally a game about gunning down hordes of brown people for money.  And the game was aware of this, and Max repeatedly explains it to the player throughout the game.

Most of the people you shoot in that game are part of violent gangs, and I still saw Max as just as bad as them.  It is explained to the player at one point that you're in the middle of a fight between nasty poor people and nasty rich people, and have become a hired gun for the rich in a country you don't understand.  Yet somehow Max isn't a villain protagonist, he still gets to be the brooding but well-intentioned noire hero down on his luck.

CoD is bad about this as well.  They'll often use 24 style "but the real villain was an American!" cop outs, but like 24 it doesn't change what the story is fundamentally about.

I always thought that cop-out was even worse.  It can easily fall into making out the brown people to be only good as mooks - for actual brain power and plotting, you need another American.