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[Krevsin]

Well, I have another pet peeve which I got after playing Far Cry 3 and STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl back-to-back

No memorable locations in a sandbox game
Seriously. The only locations I can remember from Far Cry 3 are the temple and the enemy base on the second island (the former because it's where most of the quests are handed in and the latter because it's the biggest settlement in the game). The rest just kinda blurs into an amorphous mass of tropical greens and shacks. And from what I've seen of Far Cry 4, that's not much better either.

Compare that to Stalker: SoC with its multitude of interesting locations, Rostok and the Bar, the Cordon and its Newbie Village, the Army Warehouses, the Red Forest, the various laboratories. Yes, they're all basically variations on the deprecated Soviet infrastructure theme, but the different areas have a certain personality to them and it makes them that much more memorable. They are places with names and stories to tell and are populated by people who feel much more life-like than the civvies in Far Cry 3.

Compare that to Far Cry 3, which has an entirety of two tropical islands and absolutely nothing memorable about it, with every location visited simply feeling like a faraway irrelevant backdrop rather than an actual place, just another patch of "content" with zero substance to it.

[Parsely]

I didn't find Far Cry 3 to be a particularly remarkable game at all.

[Lightningfalcon]

That is a really good point I haven't thought about that much, and is probably a decent reason for my distaste of FC3.  In Call of Pripyat, I can tell you of a bunch of locations, even if I can't remember their names.  That power plant with the electricity anomalies and poltergeists, that factory where the mercenaries are hooked up with intel, that bridge near the giant psychic rift, and basically any location that has anomalies or people.  In Fallout, you have all the major towns, like Megaton, New Vegas, Rivet City, Vault City, Goodsprings, Nellis, Necropropolis, and Reno. In pretty much any of my favorite games, I can rattle off a list of locations that had a unique feel or story to them.  Even in Far Cry 2, which had major gameplay issues, I can remember a bunch of locations set up that have no actual name.  You have that one platform on a hill that provides a good overlook of two checkpoints and a safehouse, along with any approaches, perfect for sniping, you have that one villa protected by a series of guard outpost in the jungle, that group of guardhouses set up alongside a bay, that one group of buildings on the second map located in the middle of a set of mountains and hills, with one that provides a perfect view for sniping and mortar attacks. 
 Far Cry 3... had that one hill where a starting tutorial took place, that gorge filled with bodies that the insane guy kicked you down, and those caves where the boat is holed up. 

[Rolan7]

I love Far Cry 3 to death, but you're right that none of the locations are particularly memorable except for story ones.
Except that one outpost... has a small warehouse building, fencing, and most of the enemies are together on top of some planks.  It's easy to sneak in, but I always get spotted by the ones on the planks.  Then there's just something about the layout that makes me die, even taking cover behind the warehouse.  I'm not even sure why...  I usually die to the molotov-throwers, which usually aren't an issue.  Maybe because they set up on those hills near the fence and throw down from cover, using fricken squadsight to target.

I've played Far Cry 3 to the point that I play it no-reloads, by the way.  I have a save game just after the first tower, I load from that every time I play (except coop).  I also have that nifty rebalancing mod which makes pelts valuable, most weapons (like a silenced pistol) absurdly expensive, and removes the awful mission-locks on skills.

[miauw62]

I can't really see wizards as the intelligent type. In a land with catapults, medicines, crossbows, drawbridges, and other clever things invented by genuinely intelligent people, why do you need what is effectively a crude mimicry of an intelligence? There are evidently plenty of actually-smart people around. I mean, legends has it that Archimedes set ships on fire with the power of the sun, not by chanting some made-up smart-person words, or by taking a smart-person book from a smart-person library and reading it smartly, by using mirrors and focusing light. Now that would be true intelligence.

I could, in some situations, consider it almost insulting. The implication being that if it's something intelligent, you can't understand it, so if we have some bearded person do something you can't understand, then they must be intelligent.

Ugh, I suppose I'm just not a fan of the whole concept of magic. It cannot by definition be understood, therefore it's just not that interesting to me

Discworld handles this pretty well, imo. There's even a bunch of young wizards working in a High-Energy Magic building.

[Shadowlord]

I read an article yesterday saying that pre-orders* of Evolve would get to start further into the game, skipping some of the beginning, apparently. This is apparently a valuable incentive because it's been loaded up with time-wasting grind. [The article did not have specifics about what it meant, and searching indicates that it actually unlocks characters that everyone else has to grind for or something, plus including an exclusive monster.]

Methinks things might be getting a bit out of hand.

* Xbox One and PS4 Digital Download only, it said. Or is it just Xbox? I dunno.

[alexandertnt]

To me, "You get to skip a chunk of the game!" sounds more like a symptom of an un-fun game, than an incentive to pre-order.

I don't treat my games as a workload, so IMO ideally I shouldn't really want to skip any part of the game.

[MrRoboto75]

Parts of games that are designed to be avoided or skipped seems like a waste of game.

The intentionally bad tanks in World of Tanks spring to mind.

[itisnotlogical]

Kinda bothers me about Super Mario Bros and SMB3. The most valuable secrets in the game... make it so that you don't even see most of the game. Seems a bit counter-intuitive.

[hector13]

Parts of games that are designed to be avoided or skipped seems like a waste of game.

The intentionally bad tanks in World of Tanks spring to mind.

Isn't that a pay-to-win thing though?

[Delta Foxtrot]

Intentionally bad design, yes.

[EnigmaticHat]

Kinda bothers me about Super Mario Bros and SMB3. The most valuable secrets in the game... make it so that you don't even see most of the game. Seems a bit counter-intuitive.

Yes, but they weren't exactly easy to find. One of them literally requires you to do the most counter-intuitive thing in any SMB game- stand still and duck from nothing. They're mind-boggling hard to find, and the reward is getting to the end faster. By the time you are supposed to find such secrets, you are supposed to have played through the game many, many times before.

The design of 2-1 in, I think SMB3, makes it really easy to find the secret warp pipes because there's a lift which could easily bring Mario so high he accidentally goes over the stage.  And once you arrive, thanks to the no-backtracking nature of the game, you really have no choice but to figure out how to go down the pipes.

[Neonivek]

Artificial Scarcity


So I am playing dead Island and wow there are guns! So at first ammo is really hard to find, but this is a zombie game and this is a tourist island so it is escusable...

But then you fight herds TONS of armed assailants... and even though you can stuff 10 types of giant sledge hammers down your pants you will be lucky to carry enough ammo to deal with a few groups of zombies.

Is it because bullets are rare? No, the game throws bullets at you in HUGE chunks (just not continuously)... it is because they don't like you carry any appreciable amount.

[EnigmaticHat]

Kinda bothers me about Super Mario Bros and SMB3. The most valuable secrets in the game... make it so that you don't even see most of the game. Seems a bit counter-intuitive.

Yes, but they weren't exactly easy to find. One of them literally requires you to do the most counter-intuitive thing in any SMB game- stand still and duck from nothing. They're mind-boggling hard to find, and the reward is getting to the end faster. By the time you are supposed to find such secrets, you are supposed to have played through the game many, many times before.

The design of 2-1 in, I think SMB3, makes it really easy to find the secret warp pipes because there's a lift which could easily bring Mario so high he accidentally goes over the stage.  And once you arrive, thanks to the no-backtracking nature of the game, you really have no choice but to figure out how to go down the pipes.

...I thought there were only three? 1-4 (or was it 1-3?) where you stand still and duck on the white block for 3 seconds and go behind the exit, the fortress of world 1 where you fly above the wall, and some hidden rock you break in world 2 along the east-most side of the map to reveal some hidden levels.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that 2-1 in SMB3 doesn't even have any lifts- it's a desert. And it has backtracking. Are you sure you aren't thinking of SMB1?

I thinking of the one where 2-1 is underground and everything is green.  You get to the secret area by walking on top of the roof.

[hector13]

SMB1 is 1-2, is it not?