Redeeming features of bad games

This is a thread about the one or two awesome redeeming features of otherwise bad games. Why is the game bad? Why is that one feature awesome?

For me? Naval ramming in the game Rise & Fall: Civilizations at War.

Now, Rise & Fall isn't an outright terrible game. It's a basically competent, if a bit lacklustre, RTS with some weird third person action bits thrown in. Where it gets cool is the naval combat, which is probably the most fully realized of any RTS i've played. You get several levels of ship, from galleys to full triremes, and each of the ships is in realistic scale, and beautiful graphical detail. It has individual rowers and oars, and a crew on top of the ship, all in realistic scale with the ship itself, which is something you don't often see in these games. You can upgrade your ship with sailors to help it grapple other ships, or a naval onager to let it blast the fuck out of other ships with huge rocks.

However, the best part is ramming.

For the unaware, in pre-gunpowder naval warfare, the most decisive weapon was the ship itself. Greek and Roman warships had a bronze-clad ram on their prow, just below the water, for the sole purpose of ramming other ships. In Rise & Fall, it is probably the most satisfying thing in the game. You get your trireme lined up just right with the enemy ship, your bow facing his broadside at the right range, and then you hit the button and just watch the beauty unfold. The enemy ship is frozen as you've got him in your sights, your trireme accelerates, all the oars pulling together, the crew chanting together, and then BOOM. Your ram SLAMS into the enemy ship, his sailors and soldiers fly all over the place, and the ship itself splits in half. The whole enemy unit is destroyed instantly in the most satisfying possible way. It's great.

The rest of the game is pretty boring though.

Other examples?

The characters of Dragon Age: Origins.

I hated the gameplay. The battle system was fucking horrible and mages were grotesquely over powered. You'd encounter a group of enemies, their monkeys would run at you while the mages sat an incredible distance away casting a spell that would pretty much kill your entire party in one shot. Your characters moved so slow with their weapons drawn (even if they were knives) that in the time it took you to get from the border of the casting range of the enemy to the enemy, he had knocked you over by shaking the ground, frozen you solid, set a plague of bugs on you that deplete your ten HP (seriously, I've never played an RPG where your guys had so little health) alarmingly quickly, then crushed you with a fireball from space. Oh, and all of those spells are area of effect, so that happened to your entire party, have fun reloading from your last save. You're welcome to counter with your own mages, but you run out of MP in three spells, kill two of their 9001 mages, and are now dead but at least have the satisfaction of knowing you took a couple of the cheap motherfuckers with you.

Having a radial menu to give commands that pauses the game completely defeats the purpose of having a real time battle system. And as with any sort of system that tries to program your buddies to execute certain commands on their own (like the Gambits of FFXII), the "Tactics" are pants on head retarded because the computer never takes things in context. When I say I want you to use the spell that freeze shit solid within its cone shaped area of effect when enemies are grouped closely together, I DO NOT MEAN USE IT EVEN THOUGH I'M STANDING DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF YOU AND WILL BE FROZEN SOLID AND ON A NEW LEVEL OF PISSED AS WELL AS THE BAD GUY!!!1!

All a melee character ever did was press A to swing their weapons over and over and over and over and over again, miss over and over and over and over and over and over again, and either activate an ability that allows you to defend yourself at the cost of your attack speed (oh no, I will only miss five hits a minute instead of seven), or activate one that increases your attack speed so you can miss like a blind man with a machine gun.

This god awful battle system ruined what would have been a totally awesome game. The characters and their dialogue was either totally dramatic, totally epic, or totally hilarious (upon hearing a party member is secretly related to the recently deceased king "So I guess that makes you a royal bastard, doesn't it?"). The story was also awesome, if not a bit cliche. Which is great, because the horrendous fighting system is going to get you killed so fucking often you're going to watch the same dialogue 50 times.

I swear, the actual gameplay made me want to whittle the controller to a sharp point and stab myself in the stomach with it, but Morrigan and Alistair arguing with each other was the funniest thing I've seen in vidya.

Mikey, this is what you get for playing video games PC-made RPGs on a console.

^
I heard the controls were a bit better on the PC, but I'd bet the mages were still strong to the point of being game breaking. I bet the only marginally effective melee strategy (the Rouge's backstabs) was rendered useless on anything more dangerous than a rabbit as they ALL had some backwards attack that sent you flying five feet and knocked you over, just as on console.

And I imagine the mages who spent the entire fight 50 yards away from any sort of actual violence still ended up covered in blood. Which really wasn't a big issue, just kind of funny.

Really, I preferred random, turn based encounters every five steps to this shit.

Not to mention, some of the dungeons were unbearably long. The Deep Roads looking for Branka comes to mind. As does the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest. A five hour long dungeon with those battle mechanics had me wishing the blight would just consume existence and put me out of my misery.

The characters, dialogue, and overall story was still brilliant enough to make suffering through that hell practically worth it. Seriously, it was the best combination of the three I've ever seen in a video game. Even better (barely) than Mass Effect 2.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

^
I heard the controls were a bit better on the PC, but I'd bet the mages were still strong to the point of being game breaking. I bet the only marginally effective melee strategy (the Rouge's backstabs) was rendered useless on anything more dangerous than a rabbit as they ALL had some backwards attack that sent you flying five feet and knocked you over, just as on console.

And I imagine the mages who spent the entire fight 50 yards away from any sort of actual violence still ended up covered in blood. Which really wasn't a big issue, just kind of funny.

Really, I preferred random, turn based encounters every five steps to this shit.

Not to mention, some of the dungeons were unbearably long. The Deep Roads looking for Branka comes to mind. As does the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest. A five hour long dungeon with those battle mechanics had me wishing the blight would just consume existence and put me out of my misery.

The characters, dialogue, and overall story was still brilliant enough to make suffering through that hell practically worth it. Seriously, it was the best combination of the three I've ever seen in a video game. Even better (barely) than Mass Effect 2.

The characters almost redeemed that game for me, but I hated too many of them (especially the inexplicably popular ones like Zevan and Shale) to put up with it. It's like Blizzard made singleplayer WoW and hired Joss Whedon to write the dialog.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

^
I heard the controls were a bit better on the PC, but I'd bet the mages were still strong to the point of being game breaking. I bet the only marginally effective melee strategy (the Rouge's backstabs) was rendered useless on anything more dangerous than a rabbit as they ALL had some backwards attack that sent you flying five feet and knocked you over, just as on console.

And I imagine the mages who spent the entire fight 50 yards away from any sort of actual violence still ended up covered in blood. Which really wasn't a big issue, just kind of funny.

Really, I preferred random, turn based encounters every five steps to this shit.

Not to mention, some of the dungeons were unbearably long. The Deep Roads looking for Branka comes to mind. As does the Urn of Sacred Ashes quest. A five hour long dungeon with those battle mechanics had me wishing the blight would just consume existence and put me out of my misery.

The characters, dialogue, and overall story was still brilliant enough to make suffering through that hell practically worth it. Seriously, it was the best combination of the three I've ever seen in a video game. Even better (barely) than Mass Effect 2.

I had a better time of it than you, where I just considered the combat boring, not torture. It may be because I managed to pick all the most gamebreaking abilities such as Mana Clash (kills all mages in its area of effect), stacking Haste, Momentum and Precise Striking (dual-weapon warrior kills everything in his/her path), etc. It may also be because when I don't like the combat, I turn the difficulty to easy so I don't torture myself.

Penguin wrote:

The characters almost redeemed that game for me, but I hated too many of them (especially the inexplicably popular ones like Zevan and Shale) to put up with it. It's like Blizzard made singleplayer WoW and hired Joss Whedon to write the dialog.

Ditto.

The characters are okay, but Sten is the only one with any real depth, internal conflict and complexity as far as I can see. Morrigan = bitchy for the sake of being bitchy, Zevran is bisexal which means he's a raging manwhore, Leilana may as well be Princess Zelda in her rebellious phase, Ogran is every Dwarf from every role play game ever, Alister = Xander Harris...


And don't get me started on the non-entities in the expansion pack.


The problem I had with the combat is that it had every character be as advanced and complex as the main character, when really, you want the companions to have a handful of party tricks and leave it at that. Keeping track of the development of so many characters, plotting out any synergies (if you could get those things to work), and remembering who had what ability was just a nightmare.

Eventually I gave up and let the computer control every facet of my companions while I focused on getting to know the best tactics for the Warden. (Which is running in circles and poking things in the tail). I think the game wanted me to feel better connected to the companions by making them as customisable as the main character, but it just got to be too much.

I don't actually remember if these were bad games, as I was in middle school when I played them, but I do seem to recall feeling they were kind of mediocre: the spiderman games for GameCube.

Kinda boring. Not terrible, but after a while it's like... sigh. What next. Gonna stop more muggings? Follow this cat lady around again?

So what do you do to liven it up? YOU WEBSWING OF COURSE

In the first game, webswinging was AWESOME. The only thing that inhibited it was the fact that you could not climb to the top of every building. They only rendered so high and then you weren't allowed to climb any higher, like some sort of invisible ceiling. But then in the second game, that was fixed. That was fixed so I could climb to the top of the Empire State Building and swan dive off into a bitchin' webswinging move YEEEEEEEEEEEEAH

WD40 wrote:

The characters are okay, but Sten is the only one with any real depth, internal conflict and complexity as far as I can see.

None of which is enough to justify the agony of having a conversation with him.

Quote :

And don't get me started on the non-entities in the expansion pack.

Like Shale. I can only imagine the development process for that waste of time.

"Hey, remember HK47 and how everyone liked that asshole robot? Let's do that in Dragon Age."
"Dragon Age is a fantasy game, you idiot."
"Fantasy has golems."
"Touche, salesman. Go on..."
"So yeah. A big rock golem that hates organics and talks about how squishy they are all day long."
"GENIUS"

And that's all. She. Says. It's not even anything creative like HK47's "how do you think with all those fluids swishing around in your skull?" It's just LOL YOU SQUISHY. I'M NOT. DID I MENTION YOU'RE SQUISHY, AND I'M NOT?

I honestly found her to be more irritating than Sten.

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The problem I had with the combat is that it had every character be as advanced and complex as the main character, when really, you want the companions to have a handful of party tricks and leave it at that. Keeping track of the development of so many characters, plotting out any synergies (if you could get those things to work), and remembering who had what ability was just a nightmare.

The issues I had with the combat were that it was visually boring, the screen was filled with buttons that all make your character do pretty much the exact same thing, just with different-colored particle effects, and 75% of the buttons were completely irrelevant anyway since hammering the same set of commands over and over again was what you actually had to do to get results.

That and splitting hairs to a completely ridiculous degree with vague titles. I mean, do I want the Dwarven Codpiece of +3.02% Penis Protection or the Elven CrotchGuard of +3.03% Scrotal Fortitude? Does it really even matter?

^ You forgot chicken stomping and her developing relationship with Sten. He calls her Kadan... which is pretty serious for a Qunari.

Braigwen: He also calls the Warden Kadan, if you retrieve his sword for him. Regardless of your gender. Make of that what you will.

Mikey Go WOOGA wrote:

Dragon Age Sillyness

You realize that mages are just as broken for the the player, right? You don't even need to be one; having Morrigan or Wynne in your party should be an easy button. Or as much as the shitty console port with its completely unintuitive controls can have an easy button. Having them both in your party at the same time is basically easy mode even on Nightmare.

For god's sake, there's a single spell that will one-shot any magic user, and two-shot Emerald WEAPON Gaxkang, and that's without bothering to plan ahead and stacking buffs to make it do even more damage. (Let's not forget that on the PC, you have that nice overhead view, which makes non-LOS spells like Mana Clash even more absurd.)

Also, fuck backstabbing. My PC is a human noble warrior and neither Zevran nor Leliana can keep up with his damage output. I just give them bows and have them status-fuck enemies left and right.

Braigwen wrote:

^ You forgot chicken stomping

Birds, organics, squish. Yeah, pretty forgettable really.

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and her developing relationship with Sten. He calls her Kadan... which is pretty serious for a Qunari.

Awwww, how sweet. Hopefully they can have a nice Romeo and Juliet style double suicide.

Final Fantasy X-2

Stupid plot, mostly irritating characters, world copied pixel for pixel from X with minimal changes.

But the Combat system, oh god the combat system. The ability to change your characters classes mid battle for a constantly twisting strategy, it's let down by it's presentation but at it's core it's a brilliant idea unfortunatly wrapped in a fasion show.

Nihilist wrote:

Oh, you kinko.

o_0 Yes, because this:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Is SO totally kinky. Obviously. I'm getting all hot and bothered just looking at it.

Somath Cegem wrote:

Final Fantasy X-2
But the Combat system, oh god the combat system. The ability to change your characters classes mid battle for a constantly twisting strategy

Plus the accessory system to give it a little structure and boost the classes you'd most likely be bringing. Never did really like the Dresssphere system though, or maybe I never quite got to learn how to pick out the better ones.

If only you could have picked the job classes outside battle. At the very least Rikku could wear something other than her Thief outfit when running around friggin' Gagazet. But I guess it can't be that cold there since the Ronso run around half naked despite being more fuzzy than furry.

And come on, look at FFV and tell me that wouldn't have been a fashion show had the graphics been there for it.

Dragon Age 2.

I love this game but it has a lot of faults. However, the faster combat system is not one of them (in my opinion). Party banter is stellar as well. In fact, I even liked all of the companions this time around. They've added some emotional quests that makes you feel that the PC's emotions. And I love the fact that the PC is now voiced.

Why is it bad, you say?

- It's shorter, much shorter, than Dragon Age: Origins.
- They've 'changed the art style' so any and all of the characters from DA:O that make appearances look absolutely hideous (see: Zevran and Alistair).
- They've deliberately changed the appearance and voice of several major characters for no other reason than "we can".
- They've changed voice actors for established characters for no reason.
- They reuse the exact same environment over and over and over and over again to the point where it gets confusing ('Haven't I been here before?').
- I expect the short development schedule prevented them from making a really "complete" game. They need to explain why a well-known mage (if you're playing as one) can be allowed to own a mansion and pretty much do what they want in a mage-fearing city like Kirkwall. Also, your PC becoming a blood mage would be a huge sticking point to several companions. This wasn't explored.
- A minor quibble but their save import function is broken.
- There is at least one quest that is broken and no one can complete it.

I should say before I start that I've played it through once on the PS3 rather than the PC.

Aggie wrote:

Dragon Age 2.

Party banter is stellar as well. In fact,

Did you think so? Why? I didn't think it was nearly as good. I really missed Alistair, Wynne and Zevran.

Aggie wrote:

- They reuse the exact same environment over and over and over and over again to the point where it gets confusing ('Haven't I been here before?').

This was the real problem for me. I got really, utterly bored with that bit of coastline, and the same parts of the mountain, and the same bits of the Deep Roads. One of DA1's really good parts was the massive world. I mean, the answer to the question 'have I been here before' is yes, you have. Repeatedly.

Aggie wrote:

- A minor quibble but their save import function is broken.
- There is at least one quest that is broken and no one can complete it.

The save import function works on the PS3, and if there's a quest that can't be completed, I didn't notice it. Unless it was one of plot coupons like collecting potion ingredients. (Yawn.)

Lexin wrote:

I should say before I start that I've played it through once on the PS3 rather than the PC.

Aggie wrote:

Dragon Age 2.

Party banter is stellar as well. In fact,

Did you think so? Why? I didn't think it was nearly as good. I really missed Alistair, Wynne and Zevran.

The banter and battle cries did make me literally laugh out loud so I say that it's just as good as DA:O. These ones, for example:

Varric (after getting knocked out): "To Varric, Learn how to parry. From: Your innards." Ow.

Isabela: Hmm, apostate prostitutes. Apostitutes! *laughs*

Sebastian: Oh, Hawke. We were just talking about you.
Hawke: (purple option) Oh, carry on. I love to eavesdrop.
Varric: "Hawke said sarcastically."
Hawke (to Varric): You know, I hate it when you do that.
Varric: "Hawke said as an angry aside to the dwarf."
Sebastian: Uhhh, if you two have a moment...

Sutremaine wrote:

And come on, look at FFV and tell me that wouldn't have been a fashion show had the graphics been there for it.

I would never stop playing Krylie as a Barbarian. (And Lenna as a dancer. )

Aggie wrote:

- It's shorter, much shorter, than Dragon Age: Origins.

Well considering what would have been a 5 minute combat is now only about 1 of course everything is gonna feel quicker, you massivly speed up the one thing that slowed Origins down and this will go faster, also, 10 hours in (My brother is 20) and we are both nowhere near leaving part 2, game is plenty long.

Aggie wrote:

- They've 'changed the art style' so any and all of the characters from DA:O that make appearances look absolutely hideous (see: Zevran and Alistair).

Yeah, I don't see it with Alistair, looks exactly the same.
Zevran, well of course, they've redesigned the elves and dwarves to look less human, of course Zevran would have changed.

Aggie wrote:

- They've deliberately changed the appearance and voice of several major characters for no other reason than "we can".

You mean flemeth? The Shape Shifter who can look however the fuck she wants? Or the Qunari? Who gained horns tanks to stupid fanboy bitching about Ogres having horns and Qunari not having them.

Aggie wrote:

- They've changed voice actors for established characters for no reason.

How do you know therw was no reason? Maybe the guys who did the old voices where doing other work and couldn't come in when needed? Maybe they had a falling out with the voice director? maybe the actor just didn't want to play the role again, hated it. Just because there is no given reason does not mean there is no reason.

Aggie wrote:

- They reuse the exact same environment over and over and over and over again to the point where it gets confusing ('Haven't I been here before?').

There is no defence of this, come on bioware, blocking off all but 3 rooms of a map so you can pretend it's somewhere else? not cricket.

Aggie wrote:

- I expect the short development schedule prevented them from making a really "complete" game. They need to explain why a well-known mage (if you're playing as one) can be allowed to own a mansion and pretty much do what they want in a mage-fearing city like Kirkwall. Also, your PC becoming a blood mage would be a huge sticking point to several companions. This wasn't explored.

Dear if NPC's didn't ignore your blatent spell slinging no mage character would make it into Kirkwall in the first place seeing as you have to take out those mercs RIGHT INFRONT OF A GAURD, sometimes storytelling must be scrificed for the sake of gameplay, this is one of those times, otherwise playing as a mage would have been hell compared to being a warrior or rogue.

Aggie wrote:

- A minor quibble but their save import function is broken.

Considering neitehr me nor my rotehr had any problems with importing saves i'm assuming that's a platform issue

Aggie wrote:

- There is at least one quest that is broken and no one can complete it.

Again, no excuse for this.

Bitch about teh game for being too contained or reusing places sure, anything else, your just looking for problems.

Balthier is pretty much the only good bit of FF12.

Sonic Battle. Samey combat, insane enemy AI and grindtastic story mode.

And still, SEGA is yet to top the funny lines and characterization of the aforementioned story mode. Especially Sonic himself. Ever since Sonic started to speak, Battle is the only game where he isn't "Totally Radical, dude" or an asshole.