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[Shadowlord]

Does that include TF2?

[Levi]

Does that include TF2?

Yes it does.  (and happened to be my favorite game before they added that crap)

[Parsely]

Been playing System Shock 2 recently and made me realise that it has all the mechanics of Bioshock in a setting where they actually make sense (hacking, psychic powers, cloning machines etc.).

Game mechanics integrated as storytelling devices are a thing that should be done more often.

[nenjin]

Games where the enemies can do things with basic, shared mechanics that you cannot.

For example, Dragonball Z Xenoverse. Everyone can block. But as a player, you generally accept that you can't start blocking in the middle of taking damage consecutively, like being comboed or being in the center of a beam attack. The AI, however, can. By what magical property this is so, whether its exploiting microsecond gaps in timing that a human can't, or because it's just been straight programmed to, it doesn't matter because it's still bullshit. Plenty of games often let harder enemies waive some of the core mechanics in favor of a difficulty spike. Guys not reacting to attacks so they can attack through your attacks is a popular one (DBZXV also does this.) I can accept that to a degree because it forces the player to adopt different tactics than what normally works. But what, exactly, is served by letting the enemy completely break the rules only to their increased survival and therefore dragging out the fight? If an enemy can ignore an attack because "reasons" and the player did nothing wrong, you're essentially telling the player they have to do the right thing, twice, randomly, because this guy is tough.

That's not an actual challenge in my mind, that's just attrition centered around the player's ability to execute. That it also is something the player would LOVE to do but can't because "reasons" is just kind of the slap in the face that makes it truly irritating. If you're going to let guys break the rules so they can be tough, please let them break new rules or do unexpected things, rather than letting them do something I can do but they can simply do much much better. Especially when it comes to something as core to the combat experience as timed blocks and so forth. If a guy wants vomit destructive rainbows across the whole screen, fine, let them, dealing with that is part of the challenge. But just letting them cut and run when I've got them, and by extension, every fucking thing I've fought in the game so far, dead to rights is the worst kind of difficulty because you can't do anything about it.

[Neonivek]

Mortal Kombat Deception did it far worse.

[nenjin]

Mortal Kombat Deception did it far worse.

Thanks for reminding me, yeah, MK is another huge offender in this arena. Shao Khan, Goro, etc...anyone they felt like making tougher they just forced you to hit and run or just spam ranged attacks. There's a line where past which trimming down AI reactions times goes from welcomed to bullshit, and since we're just humans, that line is pretty thin.

[Bohandas]

Unskippable and flow breaking tutorials.
As insulting as they are annoying.

Orders of magnitude worse than unskippable tutorials however, are long unskippable sequences with no gameplay at all, as in the case of the tram sequence at the beginning of Half-Life and the carriage ride at the beginning of Skyrim.

[UXLZ]

Oh god yes, fuck that opening ride in Skyrim. It's not even like the previous games where you get to make last second changes, so if you want to make a new character you have to sit through that EVERY TIME.

HL can be excused slightly more because it isn't a game you'll want to play again multiple times from scratch. (At least not like Skyrim, being an RPG.)

[Rez]

HL can be excused slightly more because it isn't a game you'll want to play again multiple times from scratch. (At least not like Skyrim, being an RPG.)

 

[UXLZ]

You know what I mean.

Besides, with Skyrim, if you want to make a new character, you HAVE to watch the cutscene again. With HL, due to its linearity, you can just keep a save file from right after the scene finishes.

[Shadowlord]

You know what I mean.

Besides, with Skyrim, if you want to make a new character, you HAVE to watch the cutscene again. With HL, due to its linearity, you can just keep a save file from right after the scene finishes.

Technically with Skyrim you can install a mod to give you start-condition diversity. Unless console skyrim.

[UXLZ]

We're talking about base games. Otherwise I could say 'you could install a mod that does X so it isn't a flaw'.

It's a problem with TES series games, to be honest. The base games tend to be shite and you need a billion mods to make it good.

[Neonivek]

The base games aren't BAAAD

They are just monotonous and eventually their monotony gets to you because they are as vast as the ocean but as deep as a puddle.

Giving credence to the whole "Linear doesn't mean bad and sandbox doesn't mean good" thing I keep saying...

[UXLZ]

Morrowind was good, Oblivion was meh~, and Skyrim was eh~. (Base games)
With mods, Skyrim is the best, Morrowind is the worst and Oblivion is kinda stuck in the middle.

What made Morrowind good was the sheer insanity of how powerful you could actually get (a powertrip) and the lack of bullshit leveled stuff, so you could go collect artifacts and build your own shrine to the clutter god.

In Oblivion they took away our levitation and our jump fortifying. As well as our people that vaguely resembled people.

In Skyrim they took out the Acrobatics skill and our Athletics skill.

[itisnotlogical]

My favorite part of Morrowind was the storytelling. Not only did I feel like reading the books, I made it my postgame adventure to collect books relating to Almsivi and Dagoth Ur so that I could more fully understand the lore.

The religion in Morrowind felt like an actual religion rather than a made-up thing, too. It was trapped in just enough mysticism and circumstance (partly due to the books, most of which contained parables or life advice and were very rare and expensive) while having enough "realistic" overtones. I would never buy the "Imperial Cult" as a real religion, but Almsivi seems like it's based very heavily on something real.