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[Neonivek]

Reviews that use guides

I hate when I get a new game that has been highly suggested only to find out that every single reviewer used a guide and was obvious about doing so. There is a very skewed view of a game when you play without the requirement to discover things for yourself and it completely changes the game. It wouldn't be so bad if the reviewer announced that they used a guide, but they never do.

And you know what

Point and Clicks that need a guide

This has actually become more common now today OUTSIDE Telltale (and Telltale's Point and clicks are so easy that they actually tell you the solutions by default), yet I will say. A point and click must be solvable without a guide, period.

I understand why this happens, because gamers don't have the patience to actually sit on a puzzle for a month like they did during the golden age of point and clicks... But still, it is aggravating.

Point and Clicks with Invisible background items.

Daedalic entertainment has mastered this skill. Make items noticeable and do NOT make them look like they are in the background. Simon the Sorcerer took this one step further and made some of their objects invisible.

[itisnotlogical]

Realistic = brown, grey, greyish-brown, etc.
It's starting to get a bit better, but I'm sick of the grey-brown, low contrast soup that has become "realistic" in recent times.

Repetitive enemy chatter
It's futile to try and count the number of times I've heard "I see you, bro!" in DE: HR, "Cuidado!" in Rainbow Six, the same five Grunt lines that they've been using ever since Halo 1, "You n'wah!" in Morrowind, etc. etc.

When you have millions on millions of dollars to create a new standard in graphics and hire the best talent in the industry, you can afford to have some guys around the office record a few hours of miscellaneous lines.

Takes forever to get playing
John Carmack talked about this in an interview once. When you boot up DOOM, you press six buttons tops and you're playing in less than ten seconds. DOOM was intentionally made that way because Carmack used to know that gamers wanted to play the game, not watch an infomercial about which companies made the game, what proprietary software is used, who owns the copyrights, what brand of graphics card the game is optimized for, who owns those copyrights, how to train your dragon, and ten stainless steel kitchen knives for three easy payments of $19.95.

[Neonivek]

Realistic = brown, grey, greyish-brown, etc.
It's starting to get a bit better, but I'm sick of the grey-brown, low contrast soup that has become "realistic" in recent times

But it is true! Look outside your house and look how muted the colors are.

I mean the trees have such a dusty sickly green don't they? Videogames are so unrealistic for using leaf greens.

[sjm9876]

Takes forever to get playing
John Carmack talked about this in an interview once. When you boot up DOOM, you press six buttons tops and you're playing in less than ten seconds. DOOM was intentionally made that way because Carmack used to know that gamers wanted to play the game, not watch an infomercial about which companies made the game, what proprietary software is used, who owns the copyrights, what brand of graphics card the game is optimized for, who owns those copyrights, how to train your dragon, and ten stainless steel kitchen knives for three easy payments of $19.95.

this is actually one of the things i think they're trying to fix on the ps4. but other thread, so ignore this comment.

[Drakale]

Repetitive enemy chatter
It's futile to try and count the number of times I've heard "I see you, bro!" in DE: HR, "Cuidado!" in Rainbow Six, the same five Grunt lines that they've been using ever since Halo 1, "You n'wah!" in Morrowind, etc. etc.

When you have millions on millions of dollars to create a new standard in graphics and hire the best talent in the industry, you can afford to have some guys around the office record a few hours of miscellaneous lines.

As much as I agree with this, this is not about to change. Due to the way the contracts works, unless you use the same actor for every voices you will pay a premium per different voices even if each actor only have a few lines. If you settle for a single actor doing a lot of lines it's manageable, but then you get the Elder scroll issue where everyone sounds the same even if the NPC's are different. I'm thinking it will take gigantic advances in computer generated voices before this get better.

[hector13]

Repetitive enemy chatter
It's futile to try and count the number of times I've heard "I see you, bro!" in DE: HR, "Cuidado!" in Rainbow Six, the same five Grunt lines that they've been using ever since Halo 1, "You n'wah!" in Morrowind, etc. etc.

When you have millions on millions of dollars to create a new standard in graphics and hire the best talent in the industry, you can afford to have some guys around the office record a few hours of miscellaneous lines.

As much as I agree with this, this is not about to change. Due to the way the contracts works, unless you use the same actor for every voices you will pay a premium per different voices even if each actor only have a few lines. If you settle for a single actor doing a lot of lines it's manageable, but then you get the Elder scroll issue where everyone sounds the same even if the NPC's are different. I'm thinking it will take gigantic advances in computer generated voices before this get better.

With the number of people who work on video games these days, and the length of time it takes to make that AAA title, it doesn't take much to ask a few of them to pop into the recording studio every day to say some lines. It may not sound like Morgan Freeman every time, but heck, I'm paying for the gameplay, not what the characters sound like.

[Ozyton]

The thing with 'brown/grey is real' is that in reality there are so many aspects that effect the way we perceive the color of objects that we don't really have a good way of simulating all of those aspects in realtime on a computer screen. There have been some fairly impressive leaps in this aspect, although I cannot think of the technology/method they used.

Basically, even though objects may have a color, light bounces off of them and is reflected off onto other objects even if the objects aren't really thought to be 'reflective'. This is why if you have a room with a greenscreen it is better to paint your walls black than it is to have them white as the black walls won't reflect ambient colors onto the subject, making the greenscreen effect better. If everything in the world was grey/brown then it is easy to believe that objects are 'real' as they seem to 'fit in' while more colorful scenes would appear 'cartoony'.

Cartoony/stylized games look awesome, by the way, 'realistic' games haven't gotten to the point where they are quite 'realistic' enough to be much more than grey/brown hues. Technology is improving of course.

I will mention a pet peeve of mine: shadow contrast. It seems everybody thinks that during a bright, sunny day objects all cast hard, dark, crisp shadows. Good joke. Get to work on that, tech guys.

[Enzo]

Trailers that don't show any gameplay.
I'm looking at you, hilariously bad 2 minute Prototype 2 TV spot. Ads for games with no in-game footage always just look like ads for movies I would never watch. I mean, who get's excited by that kind of ad besides someone who's just going to buy the game anyway?

Dialogue "Options".
This one has been around for a while, but giving the player completely meaningless dialogue choices. For instance, E.Y.E Divine Cybermancy offers the player this gem of a choice:
1) This is a great honor, but your time is up. [Kill them all]
2) The Secreta salutes you, vermin. [Kill them all]
3) Did you really think I would become one of you? [Kill them all]
Wow, what engaging roleplay. Even when it's not explicit it's masked very poorly. If any particular piece of player input is completely meaningless, can't we just skip it altogether instead of insulting my intelligence?

Sidequestitis.
In which a game has a short core playtime padded by dozens of hours of optional sidequests. I'm sorry, but I can only take so many Riddler Challenges before I go fucking insane. Couldn't you have made the actual game more than 10 hours long instead?

[Neonivek]

Sidequestitis.
In which a game has a short core playtime padded by dozens of hours of optional sidequests

This can work... but only when the side quests are strong.

[Ozyton]

Ironsight / Aim Down Sights
Uhg

Your shooter does not need this feature. If you're going for an arcadey type game and you have crosshairs pasted in the middle of the screen why do you need ironsights? If the gun is always aiming at the center of the screen what is the purpose? If aiming down the sights means that your eye somehow has augmentations that zoom in the entire view, instead of a scope magnifying your view like it does in reality, why even have a scope?

If your game has such a futuristic setting that they are capable of implementing augmented reality stuff into your helmet/visor/whatever then why have ironsights instead of having a laser feed information about where your gun is aiming directly into your visor/brain? (EDIT: Hell it could probably do more than that: displaying approximate bullet drop and other things depending on what kind of spiffy things the gun does)

If your game does not have crosshairs and your gun is not guaranteed to always be aiming at the center of the screen then you have a good reason to include ironsights. If, while looking through a magnifying scope, the lense magnifies the image within the scope and leaves your peripheral vision as it normally should, then you did a good job. If you have crosshairs and are using a cone-of-fire approach, having the 'ADS' button zoom in slightly while making you move slower and shrink the cone of fire, I suppose that could be acceptable (Played games that do it and it works fine and makes sense). If it's a third-person game and you need to go into first person view in order to remove the offset form the camera and your weapon, that could be fine.

Red Orchestra pretty much nails this. OFP/ARMA does a somewhat decent job, though most of their FOV-related stuff kinda sucks (nightvision goggles, magnified scopes). ARMA 3 features a crosshair pasted to the center of your screen but that's only to give an approximation of where you are aiming/walking considering that the game features head movement independent of where your body is facing, your weapon will realistically sway in your hands and the only way to see where you're really aiming is using the sights.

I just think that ironsights in many games are pretty silly in their implementation and the context to the game/world itself.

Oh yes, another thing: dot sights. I love parallax sights, but if you're going to put a parallax sight in your game you better make sure it has parallax in it. It really bugs me seeing a red dot painted on a piece of glass and people trying to pass it off as a dot sight >_>

[NobodyPro]

Ironsight / Aim Down Sights
*snip*

I was always under the impression that the non-ironsights shooting was shooting from the hip (located in your shoulder/collarbone), justifying the lowered accuracy.

[Neonivek]

Ironsight / Aim Down Sights
*snip*

I was always under the impression that the non-ironsights shooting was shooting from the hip (located in your shoulder/collarbone), justifying the lowered accuracy.

Given how the game shows you holding your weapon and how your In game model shows you holding your weapon.

This isn't true.

[Cthulhu]

"That's so cheap."

Translation:  "That strategy beats mine and I'm unwilling to devote effort to countering it."

[mastahcheese]

Ironsight / Aim Down Sights
*snip*

I was always under the impression that the non-ironsights shooting was shooting from the hip (located in your shoulder/collarbone), justifying the lowered accuracy.

Given how the game shows you holding your weapon and how your In game model shows you holding your weapon.

This isn't true.

I noticed that in a fair few games, without aiming down ironsights, you guy tends to have it at chest height, as opposed to eye height.

But in a lot of those games, they hold it at chest height, until you actually fire, and then they raise it up a bit in a fraction of a second.
If I knew how to make first-person shooters, I would have them fire actually from the hip, even if it did look completely ridiculous.

Actually, especially if it looked completely ridiculous.

[Ozyton]

I'm mostly referring to how everyone believes that they need to add ironsights into their shooter when it's not always necessary or doesn't always make sense. You could devote that button to some other interesting mechanic, saaayyyy, secondary fire modes for weapons. You know, something more interesting than an excuse for auto-aim snapping or whatever they do nowadays.

EDIT:

Holding it at chest height, hip fire, etc.

There was a game called Hidden and Dangerous 2 (there may have been other games that did this) but you would by default hold your weapon down so you don't accidentally shoot. You clicked once to raise your weapon into a ready position to fire. It also made it so when trying to looka round corners/out windows your weapon model didn't stick out of the corner/windowsill so people outside can spot you. I found it a fairly interesting way to approach it.

You can kinda do this in ARMA