Comments on: Five Most Annoying “Innovations” in Video Game Design

By: Tom

Tom — Mon, 31 May 2010 20:42:06 +0000

I agree with the Water Temple section… to a point. Ironically, I find the OoT Water Temple to be the easiest, and the Fire Temple to be my Kryptonite. But outside of that gamme, water areas DO HAVE crappy physics (Super Metroid anybody?) and are not balanced at all.

By: Alek

Alek — Fri, 28 May 2010 07:41:23 +0000

Just finished DMC 1, the water levels are plain boring. Oh, and i love to hate EWJ’s Sub level, man it was so hard back in the day, when i was a youngling.
Water level done properly:
Deus Ex, Denton’s upgradable swimming skills played a major role in this one.

The worst vehicle level i’ve encountered was in ‘Enter the Matrix’. The best was in ‘Cadillacs & Dinosaurs’ an arcade classic.

The toughest character i had to protect was Fallout 2′s main character’s spouse (if you were unlucky enough to get him/her). You have limited control over the spouse and they are so fragile and don’t level up as i recall.
The most pleasant babysitting job was probably with Junko Zane in ‘Freelancer’.

My fav dumbest AI…hm…CS bots, i love those guys.

Also, there’s a Submarine fighting game, akin to Twisted Metal, called ‘Critical Depth’, it’s for PS1 and not bad.

By: greg wehn

greg wehn — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:21:50 +0000

Chile,
Any comments are greatly appreciated. I too suffered through those levels… and it made me hate water in FPS’s more than perhaps 3D adventure games.

By: Chilenoneto

Chilenoneto — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 11:51:04 +0000

Kinda old article… but:

Games with nasty water levels that i suffered:

Doom 2
Duke Nukem 3d

i hate’em, i hate’em, i hate’em

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:27:14 +0000

Yeah, that was kind of dumb. They should have scripted the re-adjustment moments for between attacks.

By: gregwehn

gregwehn — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:48:31 +0000

I saw that Paul – congrats on the Platty.

Glad you enjoyed the article, and you can look forward to seeing more of the articles in the weeks to come.

I didn’t mind the entire Jeff scene in Uncharted 2, but what I hated was when Drake tried to readjust when he is under fire and got hit a few times on hard.

You can keep your crushing trophy, I don’t have the patience to go through the game a third time.

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:19:33 +0000

Good stuff, Greg. I hate water. You don’t know how relieved I was when it always seemed to drain out of sight in Uncharted 2 just when I thought I was in for an underwater puzzle.

My own personal pet peev (that you touched on slightly in number 4) is killing the player character. God I hate that. I didn’t play all this time and become attached to the character to be killed in the end and feel bad during the credits.

You want co-op AI done right? Believe it or not, take a look at Army of Two. You have just enough control over your teammate that he never becomes a burden and he pulls you out of danger far more often than he gets into it. However, the best co-op Ai award goes to Republic Commando, hands down.

As a final note, I actually enjoyed the scene with Jeff in Uncharted 2. I thought it added a uniquely tense atmosphere to the game without dragging on to long. Also on that note, next time you get on your PS3, check out my trophies. That Uncharted 2 Platy is all mine.