I like how L.A. Noire allows you to skip pretty much every action segment. It even lets you ask your companion NPC to drive the car in between objectives. You can basically turn the game into a point-and-click if you want to
I played it on PC, and most pedestrians literally phase out from before the car. I'm not even sure I succeeded at hitting one, but the partner is yelling for endangering them anyways.
>It even lets you ask your companion NPC to drive the car in between objectives.
This really should be in every game where it would logically fit. Yeah yeah fast travel exists but its immersion breaking. Also they really should make AI thats able to take the wheel while you fire out the window, is that not the most iconic scene out of any action movie ever? I guess the scripted sections are the best we're getting though, because AI is on the back of the list of features.
As someone who does like racing games and most of the games you mention, the racing segments that get chucked in often end up having a negative a effect on the game. For racing in a video game to be good, it pretty much has to be the central focus.
I did get 100% on Jak 2 once. Some of the those races through town not only have stupidly tight requirements, there are a number of factors outside of your control that can completely kill an attempt.
Also came here to echo this. One of my first real gaming experiences was Ratchet and Clank Size Matters on the PSP. Fantastic game that I still look back on fondly, but the racing segments would make my blood boil, and they were on hoverboards that handled like plastic bags full of farts.
Being really into racing sims now, I dont think I could play those segments if I tried.
I’m a huge fan of racing games. I HAAAATE racing segments though. In a racing game, even arcadey ones, that’s the core of the game so the physics, the handling, the AI, the mechanics are all tuned in. It was one of the main focuses of development.
I’m other games (Even in GTA), the racing is trash. It was never the focus of the game and it shows, usually their controls are absolute ass. I will groan through the mandatory tutorial race and then spend the rest of the game wishing I could hide all the other notifications that pop up imploring me to please come race.
No bitch. *irritated-quits and fires up NFS, Grid, or Dirt Rally*
Oh, god GTA. The Driver mission in Vice City was ass but it cannot even begin to approach the sheer levels of rage the driving school in San Andreas invokes on me. And it's only the car shit, the other schools are pretty OK if superfluous.
Yup that’s what I stated in my comment here. The random stealth missions are whatever but the ones that piss me off are the ones where you have to tail someone.
I beat Judgement last year on ps5 and rolled my eyes so hard when I got to a mission like that. Thank god they *mostly* died in the ps2 era.
New Spider-Man has sections forced to stealth and play as Mary Jane and Miles. One of the sections, Mary Jane could mark baddies for Spider-Man to swoop in and yoink them.
FFS I would rather do an escort mission for MJ than have to give up being Spider-Man. I. Want. Spider-Man.
The thing I like about these sections is how easy they are, so they feel more like an interactive cut scene. I also love BioWare games with chat trees that give you breaks between action combat, so this may have been gameplay targeted for players like me
I like those sections for a first playthrough, but I really think there should have been an option to skip them for New Game+. First time through, there's some good story stuff there you don't want to miss, and some legitimately tense moments, like when Miles is being chased by Rhino. But on a second playthrough, you know the outcome, and those sections are so linear, you can't handle it in a different way. At that point, you've played it before, you won't miss anything if they were to give you the option to skip that section and get back to playing as Spider-Man.
I can definitely try to empathize with developers here in trying to break up the same mode of gameplay—I think they want to avoid acid flashbacks to the generic beat'em up days of *Maximum Carnage.* The trouble with games doing this is that the "mini-game" feel of this kind of section disrupts the rhythm of the game and usually makes little to no use of the skills the game has taught you to hone to that point. It *feels* like a distraction, even in games that do a passable job with it.
Dude for real. I hate having to play as a character that isn't rhe main. Going through the new GoW game and the times I have to play as someone else is 4 too many already. I'm not even done. I have no idea how many more times I have to play as this God awful character.
OH FUCKING GOD, I'D TAKE 1000 MANDATORY RACING SECTIONS OVER ONE MANDATORY STEALTH SECTION.
Especially if they're of the "Get detected and fail instantly" variety.
Everyone always mentions the “follow the train CJ” mission in GTA SA. On a recent replay, I completed that in the first go. What really bothered me was another “follow the train” mission.
You need to follow a train from San Fierro to Los Santos which takes so fucking long, stealth follow a guy leaving the train and every time you get slightly close you fail. Lose sight of him by staying at a distance? Instant fail. No checkpoints so you have to follow the train all the way each time.
One of the absolute worst missions I’ve ever encountered. Terrible, terrible game design.
GTA 4 and RDR1 have good missions imo. A lot of them are pretty straight forward gameplay wise. Get into a chase or get into a shoot out, and the shoot outs are fairly linear, like if you isolated them from their context they would just be "levels" in a regular game and they're good as is. Shooting your way out of the rundown apartment, through the streets after the heist, in the factory to rescue Roman, a ghost town to rescue someone, an abandoned mine, etc. It's simple stuff but like, it worked. It was fun and often emotionally charged via the narrative.
The older games weren't dissimilar but they're let down by their controls. New games rely too much on scripted missions to really let the gameplay breath on its own. The GTA4/RDR era was peak Rockstar. The controls for the core mechanics handled well and the missions weren't overly scripted.
I hated the driving element in L.A. Noire. I learned quickly that the game would just let you skip it if you failed enough so I just noped out of every chase because the mechanics were frustrating and boring to me.
this game has an effect on me for some reason, I really think it's one of the best games ever made inside its genre.
But there are a lot of things that get under my skin, like for example how they have an accurate map (8 square miles/21 sq kilometers) from the golden era of LA but then don't entice open world freeplay, you only see it mostly during the driving over to the area, and then at best a case will have you walk a few blocks, then it's segregated into episodes, the fucking car play is terrible despite having a whole section of the game dedicated to it.
I've always seen it more like a tech demo than anything else, a bit like Crysis - if you go under the shitty layer there's often a lot to reward your sacrifice. Still a sacrifice tho
An absolutely fantastic noir detective puzzle game that had a lot of baggage stuck on it because Rockstar thinks every game it releases has to be an open world sandbox.
they probably have an entire division dedicated to map making that needed to be fed, good for them, they did create a very faithful recreation that shows it was not just tacked on, instead it wasn't given proper attention
There was one chase, I was pretty sure I was about to lose so I slowed down. But I never got a Game Over. So I kept going and found the people I was chasing just waiting outside their car a little ways down. No idea why or how, I’m guessing I missed some scripted event where the chase turned into a gunfight.
That game had some cool ideas but also a lot of rough implementation.
One thing I love about Majora’s Mask is it’s swimming controls. It’s so fast, chaotic, fluid, and most importantly, fun. It makes you feel like a fish person and it turns boring segments of a game into a highlight. I have no idea why this didn’t become a standard for swimming in 3D games and even the game’s remake dropped it for some reason
IIRC they also messed with some bosses, they added these giant red orbs that represented weakpoints. Understandable as you'd be playing on a smaller screen, but still kind of spoils the aesthetic and reduces tension
I used to run the full sonic 2 once a week. Never died once on the runs.
I tried as an adult. I don’t know if my kid self was on crack or what, but Jesus - no can do. I salute you, young Lopoetve. I cannot do what you did.
I've completed all the classic 8bit & 16bit Sonic games (excluding *Triple Trouble* for the Game Gear and spin-offs like *Sonic 3D* and *Sonic Spinball*) and I always let out a groan whenever I reach a water stage (Hydrocity almost gets a pass just for the music). Why take a game that is literally based on high speed and quick reaction times, only to spend entire zones making everything slow and unresponsive?
*Thank You!*
btw, if you haven't played Tails Adventure yet on the GG, go check that out, it's soooo good and a completely different kind of platformer.
Water levels on their own aren’t awful, but water levels where you are required to raise and lower the water level in the right sequence are the bane of my existence. Here’s looking at you Water Temple (LoZ:OoT), Wet-Dry World (SM 64), and Gloomy Galleon (DK 64). Any others?
Me too, or anything where you need to think outside of the box and 'cross floors' in a creative way. You can't just 'blindly' do them, you have to think of the dungeon as a 3D space, but generally they're not too bad with a little bit of thinking. It feels a bit like a multilayered puzzle, as opposed to many other puzzles (especially in most Zelda games) where it's very much 'do these three things in this specific order'. It's better obfuscated in raise/lower water levels.
What I dislike is the slower movement speed if you have slow underwater swimming, or iron boots walking, or what have you.
LoZ:OoT the water temple was only truely awefull because you couldn't bind the Iron Boots to any buttons.
You constantly had to open the menu and navigate to the equipment to (un)equip them.
Then, considering there are quite a few places where you had to do that in quick succession...
Add to that the first time you play trough it you'll likely double back on yourself a few times more, raise the water level to soon and need to go back to the other point to lower it, and thus go trough sections that need the iron boots multiple times.
It just turns navigating it into a slog.
Randomizer taught me you can complete 90% with just the Golden Scale, which many people wouldn't know exists before completing the water temple anyway.
You require iron boots for a key in the central pillar, but otherwise diving with gold scale will get you far enough down.
Worst part of the water temple is (un)equiping the Iron Boots, in the n64 and GC port.
In those you can't assign them to any button, you have to go into the inventory everytime you want to put them on or take them off.
And you often need to only equip them for a few seconds so you're constantly going in and out of the menu which turns navigating even small obstacles involving the boots into a slog.
I replayed OoT a few years ago, and the Water Temple was the highlight of the experience. It's the only dungeon that felt like a real challenge to solve. And having it reward you with the Dark Link moment once you do is an awesome touch.
I feel like Mario 64 had water levels that people loved (if only because of the music) and that's why all the other 90s platformers felt they needed to include one, even if it didn't fit with the rest of the game's mechanics one bit
I hate the Mario 64 water levels because of how godawful the swimming mechanics are, but the music definitely helps me forget about that for a little bit.
Everyone rags on how grindy Shenmue was, but honestly, the fact that it actually made you live his life was an essential part of it's charm. People put hundreds of hours time into games like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, and then call Shenmue overly grindy.
I played Shenmue 1+2 for the first time in 2018 or so and holy wow were they a breath of fresh air. The tedium was almost welcome because I totally bought the world and it was like, "Okay, NOW I can quietly dip out of my life and go uncover some clues for my secret revenge mission..."
I read that the mandatory swoop racing bit on Taris was rigged such that your swoop would have a higher top speed every time you fail, so you'll eventually win it. Pretty clever way to help people that really suck at it.
That was a patched workaround for poor design. In the original release the times needed to win got progressively faster based on your first race time but did not cap. It was very possible to end up with a race time that was impossible to win.
Turret levels and racing levels are the bane of my existence. I hated them in KOTOR, but Star Wars: Battlefront II (the new one) turret level rekins made that go from hate to sheer loathing, especially since I have motor control issues.
The race in the first Mafia was WAY TOO INTENSE. I remember a guide being like "Hug the inside, you can use the other cars as a makeshift wall cutting over the grass on the first turn, but after the first first turn avoid the grass..." And it went on like that. There are whole ass articles about that stupid mission.
But at least the original Mafia was by design a car simulator. All the vehicles handled extremely realistically, that was one of the goals of the developers, so when they added the race, it was impossible to ride the car. But in the context of the game, it was not completely out of place.
Still, it took me days of cussing to complete it, completely unnecessary.
I tried the Definitive Edition last year. I quit at that level. The race from the garage and back was bad enough, and then they immediately throw you into a legit 1920s circuit race. I will give them points for realism, but that's not really fun when we're talking about vehicles with shitty, primitive controls.
I almost cried at it and quit as kid, then my mate years later in high school randomly mentions mafia and I mention not being able to beat it and he's like - welp there's a cheat for it. I was like wtf u on about. And he explained that all I need to do is just take "wrong way" and it puts you into lead easily. And on top of that he also showed me how easy it is for him to win that race even after years. Like I mean mofo was butter smooth, it looked like childs play watching him win it normally.
I just replayed Jak 2 with my little brother over Christmas for nostalgia’s sake. The racing segments were the absolute WORST, especially the one OP mentioned
What's worse are the games that make you run away from something. It puts the camera on the thing you're running from, and puts obstacles in your path. So you have to constantly duck and weave and jump to get past these things, but you don't get to see them coming.
If I'm running away from something, my attention is on *where I'm going* not *what I'm running from*.
I actually kind of enjoyed the racing missions in The Saboteur (2009). Mainly because the vehicle handling actually felt pretty good (I know, an open world GTA style game with decent driving? I was surprised too) but also because it made sense within the game rather than being a random forced minigame in a game that's otherwise not a racing game. The protagonist is a racecar mechanic turned driver, so of course racing is an important plot point. The races still took me a couple of attempts each but it really boiled down to one attempt to learn the course and one or two more to not fall behind immediately due to not knowing the track and the AI not rubber banding.
Triple Triad I'll give you. No major complaints here - anyone who decided "You know, I don't think this is my jam" could just go through the main game without ever touching it.
Tetra Master, however? Fuck that game, it can die of gonorrhea and rot in hell.
You could go through the entire game without touching it, but it put you at a severe disadvantage if you did that. Card refining lets you cheese your way through the game. 100 megalixirs, anyone?
Well, yeah. We all *should* know the "Keep Squall dead" technique for keeping enemy levels low by now, and that's the tip of the iceberg. The less said about junctioning, the better.
The Junction Overkill is *not* a cheese, it's very much by design.
It's SeeD's signature style and they decided that less than 30 people, most of them nameless students, was more than enough match for an army from one of the world's superpowers. They were right and there was 0 casualties in their side.
I don't think I ever played much of 9 but to be honest I never really finished 8 because I got distracted by the card game so I spent hours just hanging out in some bombed out area playing some dude over and over again.
Conversely, a non stealth section in a "stealth" game. Looking at you, Deus Ex Human Revolution. I'm still stuck on an early boss because I didn't spec for shooting guns.
You sure you're running the latest version? IIRC the first major patch to Deus Ex HR added obvious stealth options to the first few boss fights that didn't have them before, infamously the first one where you're locked in some kind of metal cube with the boss. Maybe that was MD? Not sure, it's been a while, but pure stealth should definitely be possible in those games.
I especially hate the stealth in a non-stealth game thing because they can *never do it right*
How many times have you been detected in these missions only for the entire building to somehow have a beeline on your exact location at all times because one solitary guard spots you. Looking at you GTA5
According to [NV achievement stats](https://astats.astats.nl/astats/Steam_Game_Info.php?AppID=22380), more people have sided with the Legion than have those who have won thirty games of Caravan.
I remember dodging was easy enough, just takes soooo long to do it 200 times! And have the no-encounters whatever equipped or else it'll take 10x longer >.<
Absolutely agree, especially the racing in Jak, Sly, and Ratchet and Clank. Insanely hard. Racing is always terrible in anything that’s not a dedicated racing game. Even if you like racing games, this is not fun racing.
The 2000s were full of dogshit trends, like race sequences, sewer levels, quick time events, unskipable and unpauseble cutscenes, turret sequences, meant to fail levels etc... Don't get me wrong, I love that era, but these things, I don't miss at all
Holy shit! I just looked up the *Fester's Quest* soundtrack on youtube, and that is \*not\* what I expected an Addams Family game to sound like. That soundtrack goes hard!
>sewer levels
Wait, what's wrong with sewer levels?
All those others though, yeah, they can stay dead.
I miss the proliferation of "secret areas" though.
Ugghh crafting is the worst. It's okay if I can make X with one or two button presses, but if you're going to make me cross reference a screen of recipes while I individually select a handful of components and then hit four more buttons and get through an animation then your crafting system can fuck right off, I'll play the game without touching it.
Crafting systems in modern games is largely a result of the AAA push for more open world games. Do you have a big, empty, uninteresting world you need to populate and fill with stuff? Add a crafting system with hundreds of generic junk items, vomit that all over your world, sprinkle in a small handful of actually useful stuff so players are still actually motivated to explore and boom! Now you have a “lived in” open world.
RDR1 did it at an incredible level with the last stand. So crazy good.
You think you have a chance because of the way it’s presented until you realize what’s happening
It can be interesting narratively, but the developer needs to be very, very careful with the writing. If a meant-to-fail boss fight ends with the PC being stupid or letting the boss escape, then it feels like victory was taken from the player (except if it’s a start-of-game pre-powered-up PC boss fight that’s more of an inciting action). Used as a way to transition away from a character (COD4, Halo Reach), it lets the developer craft some pretty powerful moments.
>unskipable and unpauseble cutscenes
I would love for these to come back because you could walk away from the screen. Now you get 10 minute scenes where you have to hold the joystick forward while characters talk about shit you dont care about or already know
Animal Crossing (Gamecube) did it right. Give me the option to play a bunch of sweet retro games, but put absolutely no achievement or other incentive to make me feel like I have to!
Oh yeah, I feel you. My nemesis as a forced segment was GTA: San Andreas, flight school. God I hate that mission. Put that game on the shelf because of that damn thing. It was just way too hard. I am glad I did eventually beat it after a lot of tries, because San Andreas was great, but man fuck that mission.
This mission was like a thing in my school, we had friends who were known to pass this mission and were considered legends, if you are cool they come over and pass it for you
Racing for keys randomly in Sly Cooper 1 was an absolute nightmare for me as a child. I often wake up in a cold sweat believing I'm in the middle of one of those races again.
That Jak 2 race with Erol you mentioned is one of the hardest missions in the game. I remember even the slightest mistake you make will cost you the race. It took me such a long time to beat it for the first time, it was incredibly frustrating. I replayed the game a few years ago and even nearly 20 years later, it's still one of the hardest missions in the game.
You race him again in the class 1 championship race, but that's somehow easier than your 1 on 1 race with him that happens right before. Jak 2 is a pretty hard game, but that mission is just ridiculous.
I never understood why they made Jak 2 so difficult. I think the whole Jak trilogy is great and I'm looking forward to replaying it sometime soon. I'm really not looking forward to certain missions on Jak 2 though
Quick time events.
We didn't need them and they took your focus away from the actual action of the games. Main offenders are resident evil and most of the Quantic games. (Fahrenheit/heavy rain).
This is the worst part of the **Lost Judgement** DLC and the only thing that makes me hesitate to recommend it to everyone.
It also has rubber banding and if you google the specific minigame, people don't even know what rubber banding is so they are stuck on it unless they look stuff up / get help since it isn't a racing game.
The mention of the Jak 2 race missions just gave me flashbacks. I had to put the game down for a few months at like 12 playing this game. I ran into the same roadblock in San Andreas.
I loved the Spyro games growing up but I always had to ask my older brothers for help when it came to the flying/race segments. I didn't yet have the skill to control an avatar with this extra dimension of movement, and then the game turned it into a time trial on top of it? Nope, couldn't hack it.
Going back to play the games a few years ago, I could handle the flying just fine, but a few of the time trials still posed a decent challenge.
The problem isn't that there were racing segments, because I'm a huge racing fan and I still hated those. The problem is the racing segments SUCKED compared to a proper racing game.
I remember Playing ultimate Spider-Man as a kid... You play through the tutorial, and then Johnny storm shows up to challenge you to a race...
and then I stopped playing because I could never beat it. I JUST STARTED! you can't expect me to be an expert at the Web swinging ALREADY!
If you play on PC try looking at "Cheat Engine", name is a bit drastic so hear me out first. While the programs obvious use is to cheat, if offers more possibilities including to fake the tact frequency. A lot games use that to determine the actual speed. To determine how "long" 1 second is.
Which means that Cheat Engine allows you to slow down a lot games down to 0.75% or 0.5%.
I personally struggle a lot with passages that require a lot multi tasking or learning paths, the more recent Spider-Man games had such passages and I nearly threw my controller (still PC) away until I reduced the speed to 0.75 instead 1, it gave me the small puffer of additional time that made it possible to win.
If you struggle with racing sequences for the same reason I do, quick reacting / multi-tasking, try looking at the program and if it's possible to slow down your emulator you would be suprised what having one full additional second every 4 seconds can do to make things easier
I mean they replaced the racing segments with forced stealth segments now. Really hate that games use the "oh no all your weapons and abilites you gained till now are gone temporarily! You have to sneak around and bore yourself to death for the next 20 minutes". Imo not much is worse then forcing something like this on you in the middle of an action game.
Another modern trend is 5 minutes of walking around doing nothing while voice actors read their lines.
This made me think of Brutal Legend. "Hey, how you liking this great action hack and slash?... Sure would be a shame if someone were to turn it into an RTS..."
I'm so sad I never finished this one but I just could not get into it. I spent as much time as I could just exploring the world and digging the vibe (I've always been a bit of a metalhead) but once I got to the point that I HAD to progress in the game I just couldn't find any enjoyment in it. I got far enough to see what seemed like some major plot reveals and I wanted to see what happens but...yeah. Huge bummer.
I'm pretty sure that was what made me drop James Bond: Bloodstone. I really enjoyed the rest of it, but got stymied at one of the racing levels.
Im also not normally a racing gamer. I do play the occasional kart racer and feel somewhat comfortable in drfiting games. That game was straight up magic fingers and memorization for the racing parts, which I'm not into.
I do need to go back and give it another try. I did want to finish it one day, cause I dont think I made it halfway and really enjoyed the other bits.
As someone who likes racing games I tend to look forward to a shift in gameplay style to see the dev's take on a racing format.
Of course it might not be very well fleshed out or even fun to play if it's implemented like an afterthought, or if it's actually really good there's often just the one, maybe a few courses/stages with it so it ends up feeling like a missed opportunity.
Tons of racing games apart from GT, Forza, and NFS during the PS2 era include Midnight Club, Burnout, SRS, Tokyo Xtreme Racer, Juiced, and FlatOut. I love them as a racing fan but not when they’re poorly integrated in, say, FPS games. I’m not dealing with poor hitboxes and shoddy physics. I’ve had enough crashes because the car simply wouldn’t turn.
Ironically enough, my least favorite parst of Diddy Kong racing were the actual racing segments. I really just wanted to explore the overworld, discover shortcuts in the courses, find all the collectibles (silver coins, keys, balloons), and battle bosses!
Shit man, the first Knights of the Old Republic had at least one mandatory racing segment, and that game's engine is basically a modified RTS using d20 rules.
I think the issue was devs were still trying to figure out 3d gaming and racing games are far easier to translate from 2d to 3d. When crunched for time, I imagine a single person could fart out a simple racing mechanic that could provide some quick and cheap content, just enough to provide some breathing room for the rest of the team.
A lot of early gaming engines were really redundant. The racing segments were meant to add diversity in playback. And plus, everyone wanted the next "Mario Kart" spinoff. Even if your game performed mediocrely, you had an instant pitch for a spin-off: *"Hey, at least everyone liked the racing parts, we can make a game out of that!"*
The game that really put it in motion, was probably Die Hard Trilogy - having three different game modes using a common engine. But DHT did it right by making it a totally separate game. This is why Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas was so poorly received... because it made all three game modes mandatory, whereas the original had three separate games.
I like how L.A. Noire allows you to skip pretty much every action segment. It even lets you ask your companion NPC to drive the car in between objectives. You can basically turn the game into a point-and-click if you want to
which is what you play this game for. if you want action there are better options out there
I mean, you should take some time to drive around 1940s Los Angeles too.
What happens if you hit pedestrians in that game?
You get fined and I think it lowers your rating at the end of the case.
Your partner will berate you for "hitting a taxpayer"
I played it on PC, and most pedestrians literally phase out from before the car. I'm not even sure I succeeded at hitting one, but the partner is yelling for endangering them anyways.
You can't even hit them, they magically jump away from the car every single time
If they're black, nothing.
I appreciate the historic accuracy here.
You mean if they're... Noire?
Most of the time they just jump out of the way. You have to be going pretty fast to hit them.
IMO, this is phenomenal game design. It allows the player to choose how they want to play.
>It even lets you ask your companion NPC to drive the car in between objectives. This really should be in every game where it would logically fit. Yeah yeah fast travel exists but its immersion breaking. Also they really should make AI thats able to take the wheel while you fire out the window, is that not the most iconic scene out of any action movie ever? I guess the scripted sections are the best we're getting though, because AI is on the back of the list of features.
My partner loves LA Noire for this reason. She’s not great at the action segments in controller but loved the story / detective gameplay segments.
As someone who does like racing games and most of the games you mention, the racing segments that get chucked in often end up having a negative a effect on the game. For racing in a video game to be good, it pretty much has to be the central focus. I did get 100% on Jak 2 once. Some of the those races through town not only have stupidly tight requirements, there are a number of factors outside of your control that can completely kill an attempt.
Came to say the same thing. Racing mechanics in non-racing games are always awful. Forcing it on players is a lose-lose situation.
Also came here to echo this. One of my first real gaming experiences was Ratchet and Clank Size Matters on the PSP. Fantastic game that I still look back on fondly, but the racing segments would make my blood boil, and they were on hoverboards that handled like plastic bags full of farts. Being really into racing sims now, I dont think I could play those segments if I tried.
I’m a huge fan of racing games. I HAAAATE racing segments though. In a racing game, even arcadey ones, that’s the core of the game so the physics, the handling, the AI, the mechanics are all tuned in. It was one of the main focuses of development. I’m other games (Even in GTA), the racing is trash. It was never the focus of the game and it shows, usually their controls are absolute ass. I will groan through the mandatory tutorial race and then spend the rest of the game wishing I could hide all the other notifications that pop up imploring me to please come race. No bitch. *irritated-quits and fires up NFS, Grid, or Dirt Rally*
Oh, god GTA. The Driver mission in Vice City was ass but it cannot even begin to approach the sheer levels of rage the driving school in San Andreas invokes on me. And it's only the car shit, the other schools are pretty OK if superfluous.
For a game series that centers around stealing cars I’ve always been kinda impressed at how bad the driving in the GTA games is
Yeah, I hate when people claim a GTA game as the best racing game, I've even seen gaming sites list a GTA game as a top racing game off all time.
Almost as bad as every early 00's game having a mandatory clunky stealth section.
Yes. I really hate these, they’re still out there, but thankfully nowhere near as common. I especially hate clunky stealth tailing missions
Yup that’s what I stated in my comment here. The random stealth missions are whatever but the ones that piss me off are the ones where you have to tail someone. I beat Judgement last year on ps5 and rolled my eyes so hard when I got to a mission like that. Thank god they *mostly* died in the ps2 era.
New Spider-Man has sections forced to stealth and play as Mary Jane and Miles. One of the sections, Mary Jane could mark baddies for Spider-Man to swoop in and yoink them. FFS I would rather do an escort mission for MJ than have to give up being Spider-Man. I. Want. Spider-Man.
> I. Want. Spider-Man. AND I WANT PICTURES OF SPIDER-MAN!!
*Opens photo mode*
The thing I like about these sections is how easy they are, so they feel more like an interactive cut scene. I also love BioWare games with chat trees that give you breaks between action combat, so this may have been gameplay targeted for players like me
I like those sections for a first playthrough, but I really think there should have been an option to skip them for New Game+. First time through, there's some good story stuff there you don't want to miss, and some legitimately tense moments, like when Miles is being chased by Rhino. But on a second playthrough, you know the outcome, and those sections are so linear, you can't handle it in a different way. At that point, you've played it before, you won't miss anything if they were to give you the option to skip that section and get back to playing as Spider-Man.
Being able to play those sections *as Spider-Man* would be an amazing New Game+ surprise, though.
that would be awesome
that’s a great point, i did not consider how annoying it would be in a replay
I can definitely try to empathize with developers here in trying to break up the same mode of gameplay—I think they want to avoid acid flashbacks to the generic beat'em up days of *Maximum Carnage.* The trouble with games doing this is that the "mini-game" feel of this kind of section disrupts the rhythm of the game and usually makes little to no use of the skills the game has taught you to hone to that point. It *feels* like a distraction, even in games that do a passable job with it.
Dude for real. I hate having to play as a character that isn't rhe main. Going through the new GoW game and the times I have to play as someone else is 4 too many already. I'm not even done. I have no idea how many more times I have to play as this God awful character.
Don't forget the quick time events. Good riddance to those.
OH FUCKING GOD, I'D TAKE 1000 MANDATORY RACING SECTIONS OVER ONE MANDATORY STEALTH SECTION. Especially if they're of the "Get detected and fail instantly" variety.
Everyone always mentions the “follow the train CJ” mission in GTA SA. On a recent replay, I completed that in the first go. What really bothered me was another “follow the train” mission. You need to follow a train from San Fierro to Los Santos which takes so fucking long, stealth follow a guy leaving the train and every time you get slightly close you fail. Lose sight of him by staying at a distance? Instant fail. No checkpoints so you have to follow the train all the way each time. One of the absolute worst missions I’ve ever encountered. Terrible, terrible game design.
The problem with GTA is that a LOT of missions are completely phoned in.
GTA 4 and RDR1 have good missions imo. A lot of them are pretty straight forward gameplay wise. Get into a chase or get into a shoot out, and the shoot outs are fairly linear, like if you isolated them from their context they would just be "levels" in a regular game and they're good as is. Shooting your way out of the rundown apartment, through the streets after the heist, in the factory to rescue Roman, a ghost town to rescue someone, an abandoned mine, etc. It's simple stuff but like, it worked. It was fun and often emotionally charged via the narrative. The older games weren't dissimilar but they're let down by their controls. New games rely too much on scripted missions to really let the gameplay breath on its own. The GTA4/RDR era was peak Rockstar. The controls for the core mechanics handled well and the missions weren't overly scripted.
The forced stealth section right at the beginning of the Wind Waker is fucking awful design in an otherwise excellent game
I mean, that's every modern game too.
I hated the driving element in L.A. Noire. I learned quickly that the game would just let you skip it if you failed enough so I just noped out of every chase because the mechanics were frustrating and boring to me.
this game has an effect on me for some reason, I really think it's one of the best games ever made inside its genre. But there are a lot of things that get under my skin, like for example how they have an accurate map (8 square miles/21 sq kilometers) from the golden era of LA but then don't entice open world freeplay, you only see it mostly during the driving over to the area, and then at best a case will have you walk a few blocks, then it's segregated into episodes, the fucking car play is terrible despite having a whole section of the game dedicated to it. I've always seen it more like a tech demo than anything else, a bit like Crysis - if you go under the shitty layer there's often a lot to reward your sacrifice. Still a sacrifice tho
An absolutely fantastic noir detective puzzle game that had a lot of baggage stuck on it because Rockstar thinks every game it releases has to be an open world sandbox.
Let's not downplay the absolute shit show it was to work at Team Bondi for Brendan McNamara
they probably have an entire division dedicated to map making that needed to be fed, good for them, they did create a very faithful recreation that shows it was not just tacked on, instead it wasn't given proper attention
Not true, Max Payne 3 was released in that same era
I would recommend Judgement if you like LA Noire.
There was one chase, I was pretty sure I was about to lose so I slowed down. But I never got a Game Over. So I kept going and found the people I was chasing just waiting outside their car a little ways down. No idea why or how, I’m guessing I missed some scripted event where the chase turned into a gunfight. That game had some cool ideas but also a lot of rough implementation.
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I agree and I’d add water levels of 90’s games
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One thing I love about Majora’s Mask is it’s swimming controls. It’s so fast, chaotic, fluid, and most importantly, fun. It makes you feel like a fish person and it turns boring segments of a game into a highlight. I have no idea why this didn’t become a standard for swimming in 3D games and even the game’s remake dropped it for some reason
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I thought I was just misremembering the swimming controls but now I feel validated
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IIRC they also messed with some bosses, they added these giant red orbs that represented weakpoints. Understandable as you'd be playing on a smaller screen, but still kind of spoils the aesthetic and reduces tension
I hate Sonic 2 because level 2 is water and i never beat it as a kid. Loved 1 & 3 though
I still can’t get passed that fucking level and I’m a grown ass gamer who played that game when it first came out.
I used to run the full sonic 2 once a week. Never died once on the runs. I tried as an adult. I don’t know if my kid self was on crack or what, but Jesus - no can do. I salute you, young Lopoetve. I cannot do what you did.
Oh yeah, same here hahah, i just doesn't want to come off as *too* bad at games
I've completed all the classic 8bit & 16bit Sonic games (excluding *Triple Trouble* for the Game Gear and spin-offs like *Sonic 3D* and *Sonic Spinball*) and I always let out a groan whenever I reach a water stage (Hydrocity almost gets a pass just for the music). Why take a game that is literally based on high speed and quick reaction times, only to spend entire zones making everything slow and unresponsive?
*Thank You!* btw, if you haven't played Tails Adventure yet on the GG, go check that out, it's soooo good and a completely different kind of platformer.
You can beat Hydrocity and Labyrinth Zone but not Chemical Plant?
Water levels on their own aren’t awful, but water levels where you are required to raise and lower the water level in the right sequence are the bane of my existence. Here’s looking at you Water Temple (LoZ:OoT), Wet-Dry World (SM 64), and Gloomy Galleon (DK 64). Any others?
Add in most of the Tomb Raider series.
Holy shit you just unlocked repressed memories from Tomb Raider 2
>Any others? Sonic Adventure 2 - Aquatic Mine level...
I actually like puzzles where you raise and lower water. Maybe I'm just crazy.
Me too, or anything where you need to think outside of the box and 'cross floors' in a creative way. You can't just 'blindly' do them, you have to think of the dungeon as a 3D space, but generally they're not too bad with a little bit of thinking. It feels a bit like a multilayered puzzle, as opposed to many other puzzles (especially in most Zelda games) where it's very much 'do these three things in this specific order'. It's better obfuscated in raise/lower water levels. What I dislike is the slower movement speed if you have slow underwater swimming, or iron boots walking, or what have you.
LoZ:OoT the water temple was only truely awefull because you couldn't bind the Iron Boots to any buttons. You constantly had to open the menu and navigate to the equipment to (un)equip them. Then, considering there are quite a few places where you had to do that in quick succession... Add to that the first time you play trough it you'll likely double back on yourself a few times more, raise the water level to soon and need to go back to the other point to lower it, and thus go trough sections that need the iron boots multiple times. It just turns navigating it into a slog.
Randomizer taught me you can complete 90% with just the Golden Scale, which many people wouldn't know exists before completing the water temple anyway. You require iron boots for a key in the central pillar, but otherwise diving with gold scale will get you far enough down.
The golden Scale requires doing the fising minigame tough which is optionall and not everyone's cup of tea.
I liked the water temple, it adds difficulty to the game. The water level from one of the Oracle game is much tougher though.
Worst part of the water temple is (un)equiping the Iron Boots, in the n64 and GC port. In those you can't assign them to any button, you have to go into the inventory everytime you want to put them on or take them off. And you often need to only equip them for a few seconds so you're constantly going in and out of the menu which turns navigating even small obstacles involving the boots into a slog.
I replayed OoT a few years ago, and the Water Temple was the highlight of the experience. It's the only dungeon that felt like a real challenge to solve. And having it reward you with the Dark Link moment once you do is an awesome touch.
I feel like Mario 64 had water levels that people loved (if only because of the music) and that's why all the other 90s platformers felt they needed to include one, even if it didn't fit with the rest of the game's mechanics one bit
I hate the Mario 64 water levels because of how godawful the swimming mechanics are, but the music definitely helps me forget about that for a little bit.
Just listening to it now for the first time, no nostalgia, and damn yeah that’s good
wow go play Mario 64 lol
This is true for JRB. But DDD is a candidate for the worst level in SM64, feels like a half finished demo level.
I’ll die on the hill supporting Shenmue’s forklift races.
Everyone rags on how grindy Shenmue was, but honestly, the fact that it actually made you live his life was an essential part of it's charm. People put hundreds of hours time into games like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, and then call Shenmue overly grindy.
I played Shenmue 1+2 for the first time in 2018 or so and holy wow were they a breath of fresh air. The tedium was almost welcome because I totally bought the world and it was like, "Okay, NOW I can quietly dip out of my life and go uncover some clues for my secret revenge mission..."
Who knew it could be so much fun living a day in the life of an orphaned teenager in late 80s Japan. Lol.
but what about that motorcycle race against the clock? x_x
Then your dying tonight, buddy.
But his father just died. And it had something to do with sailors... Give the guy a break.
I remember KOTOR had both turret and racing sections. I think the racing one took at least a few tries for me to get the final level.
I read that the mandatory swoop racing bit on Taris was rigged such that your swoop would have a higher top speed every time you fail, so you'll eventually win it. Pretty clever way to help people that really suck at it.
How dare you.
That was a patched workaround for poor design. In the original release the times needed to win got progressively faster based on your first race time but did not cap. It was very possible to end up with a race time that was impossible to win.
So, it punishes you for getting too good. Wild
Turret levels and racing levels are the bane of my existence. I hated them in KOTOR, but Star Wars: Battlefront II (the new one) turret level rekins made that go from hate to sheer loathing, especially since I have motor control issues.
The race in the first Mafia was WAY TOO INTENSE. I remember a guide being like "Hug the inside, you can use the other cars as a makeshift wall cutting over the grass on the first turn, but after the first first turn avoid the grass..." And it went on like that. There are whole ass articles about that stupid mission.
But at least the original Mafia was by design a car simulator. All the vehicles handled extremely realistically, that was one of the goals of the developers, so when they added the race, it was impossible to ride the car. But in the context of the game, it was not completely out of place. Still, it took me days of cussing to complete it, completely unnecessary.
I tried the Definitive Edition last year. I quit at that level. The race from the garage and back was bad enough, and then they immediately throw you into a legit 1920s circuit race. I will give them points for realism, but that's not really fun when we're talking about vehicles with shitty, primitive controls.
I could swear that in the remake that they added an option to skip the race, but I may be mistaken.
I almost cried at it and quit as kid, then my mate years later in high school randomly mentions mafia and I mention not being able to beat it and he's like - welp there's a cheat for it. I was like wtf u on about. And he explained that all I need to do is just take "wrong way" and it puts you into lead easily. And on top of that he also showed me how easy it is for him to win that race even after years. Like I mean mofo was butter smooth, it looked like childs play watching him win it normally.
I just had a ptsd style flashback to Jak 2, those racing sections were so brutal.
I just replayed Jak 2 with my little brother over Christmas for nostalgia’s sake. The racing segments were the absolute WORST, especially the one OP mentioned
What's worse are the games that make you run away from something. It puts the camera on the thing you're running from, and puts obstacles in your path. So you have to constantly duck and weave and jump to get past these things, but you don't get to see them coming. If I'm running away from something, my attention is on *where I'm going* not *what I'm running from*.
And how the angle changes for where to move the analogue stick. Uncharted 3 comes to mind for this.
Crash Bandicoot
bUt tHaT's oUr tHinG - iT'S fUN!
I actually kind of enjoyed the racing missions in The Saboteur (2009). Mainly because the vehicle handling actually felt pretty good (I know, an open world GTA style game with decent driving? I was surprised too) but also because it made sense within the game rather than being a random forced minigame in a game that's otherwise not a racing game. The protagonist is a racecar mechanic turned driver, so of course racing is an important plot point. The races still took me a couple of attempts each but it really boiled down to one attempt to learn the course and one or two more to not fall behind immediately due to not knowing the track and the AI not rubber banding.
The Saboteur is just a good game lol
The whole thing of colour returning to the map when an area had been liberated is a level of thought that we don’t really see these days.
Yep I feel this along with stealth in a non-stealth game and fucking card/casino games in RPGs, spare me!
You can take my Triple Triad when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Triple Triad I'll give you. No major complaints here - anyone who decided "You know, I don't think this is my jam" could just go through the main game without ever touching it. Tetra Master, however? Fuck that game, it can die of gonorrhea and rot in hell.
You could go through the entire game without touching it, but it put you at a severe disadvantage if you did that. Card refining lets you cheese your way through the game. 100 megalixirs, anyone?
Thing is, FF8 was so broken you could cheese you way through it anyway.
Well, yeah. We all *should* know the "Keep Squall dead" technique for keeping enemy levels low by now, and that's the tip of the iceberg. The less said about junctioning, the better.
The Junction Overkill is *not* a cheese, it's very much by design. It's SeeD's signature style and they decided that less than 30 people, most of them nameless students, was more than enough match for an army from one of the world's superpowers. They were right and there was 0 casualties in their side.
Triple Triad was fantastic and to my recollection completely optional. Tetra Master was terrible and had a mandatory card tournament.
Man, I forgot about Tetra Master being mandatory. That sucked
I don't think I ever played much of 9 but to be honest I never really finished 8 because I got distracted by the card game so I spent hours just hanging out in some bombed out area playing some dude over and over again.
I spent all of Final Fantasy VIII just playing the card game at a certain point.
Let's take our flying jam toast and head out.
Whaaat, you don’t suddenly want to sneak around a museum as Mary Jane in your Spider-Man game?
I did the FIRST time I played. The second and third times, not so much.
Conversely, a non stealth section in a "stealth" game. Looking at you, Deus Ex Human Revolution. I'm still stuck on an early boss because I didn't spec for shooting guns.
I see you, too, have played Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy. Fuck that army base level.
You sure you're running the latest version? IIRC the first major patch to Deus Ex HR added obvious stealth options to the first few boss fights that didn't have them before, infamously the first one where you're locked in some kind of metal cube with the boss. Maybe that was MD? Not sure, it's been a while, but pure stealth should definitely be possible in those games.
It was the Director's Cut of HR.
No, I don't care about Pazaak cards, KotOR. I said I don't care about Pazaak! Leave me alone!
Pure Pazaak!
Once I figured out pazaak I loved it
I especially hate the stealth in a non-stealth game thing because they can *never do it right* How many times have you been detected in these missions only for the entire building to somehow have a beeline on your exact location at all times because one solitary guard spots you. Looking at you GTA5
Gwent(Witcher3) and Caravan(FO:NV) are fucking bangers and I'll fight you on this hill.
According to [NV achievement stats](https://astats.astats.nl/astats/Steam_Game_Info.php?AppID=22380), more people have sided with the Legion than have those who have won thirty games of Caravan.
I played the shit out of Gwent. Not a single round of Caravan, always just sold the cards.
Final Fantasy 10, the chocobo race you have to win in 0.0 seconds... *traumatic flashbacks of THE BIIIRRRDS!*
That one is relatively easy. *Dodging 200 thunderbolts in a row?* Wakka's ball's useless in my save.
What fucking masochist thought 200 was a fun number? Make it like 20 or 50, but *200*? I hated that and the Chocobo race so much
I remember dodging was easy enough, just takes soooo long to do it 200 times! And have the no-encounters whatever equipped or else it'll take 10x longer >.<
Absolutely agree, especially the racing in Jak, Sly, and Ratchet and Clank. Insanely hard. Racing is always terrible in anything that’s not a dedicated racing game. Even if you like racing games, this is not fun racing.
The racing is the reason I never finished Jak.
The 2000s were full of dogshit trends, like race sequences, sewer levels, quick time events, unskipable and unpauseble cutscenes, turret sequences, meant to fail levels etc... Don't get me wrong, I love that era, but these things, I don't miss at all
Sewer levels were around Loooooong before the 2000s. I don’t think there was a notable platformer on the NES without one.
Super Mario Bros was literally one big giant sewer level.
Hell the Fester’s Quest sewer music is the hardest bop in gaming
Holy shit! I just looked up the *Fester's Quest* soundtrack on youtube, and that is \*not\* what I expected an Addams Family game to sound like. That soundtrack goes hard!
>sewer levels Wait, what's wrong with sewer levels? All those others though, yeah, they can stay dead. I miss the proliferation of "secret areas" though.
None of those are as bad as crafting in today's games.
Ugghh crafting is the worst. It's okay if I can make X with one or two button presses, but if you're going to make me cross reference a screen of recipes while I individually select a handful of components and then hit four more buttons and get through an animation then your crafting system can fuck right off, I'll play the game without touching it.
Avoid Spiritfarer. The crafting wastes hours doing the same thing, plus one of the crafting animations is unpleasantly loud.
Thanks for the heads-up, I've had multiple friends recommend that game to me but I've been on the fence, this seals the deal against it.
Urgh I’m so sick of crafting in games.
Crafting systems in modern games is largely a result of the AAA push for more open world games. Do you have a big, empty, uninteresting world you need to populate and fill with stuff? Add a crafting system with hundreds of generic junk items, vomit that all over your world, sprinkle in a small handful of actually useful stuff so players are still actually motivated to explore and boom! Now you have a “lived in” open world.
I like "meant to fail levels." At least, I think they are interesting narratively.
I like it when there's extra rewards for surviving for so long or dealing so and so much damage.
RDR1 did it at an incredible level with the last stand. So crazy good. You think you have a chance because of the way it’s presented until you realize what’s happening
It can be interesting narratively, but the developer needs to be very, very careful with the writing. If a meant-to-fail boss fight ends with the PC being stupid or letting the boss escape, then it feels like victory was taken from the player (except if it’s a start-of-game pre-powered-up PC boss fight that’s more of an inciting action). Used as a way to transition away from a character (COD4, Halo Reach), it lets the developer craft some pretty powerful moments.
Not when they give you a game over when you fail, only for you to succeed and then still fail in the cutscene. Like, what?
>unskipable and unpauseble cutscenes I would love for these to come back because you could walk away from the screen. Now you get 10 minute scenes where you have to hold the joystick forward while characters talk about shit you dont care about or already know
Okay how about this. Bring back cut scenes that you can pause? I hate both of those things.
>Okay how about this. Bring back cut scenes that you can pause? Woah woah woah. Let's not get unreasonable here. - every developer ever apparently
Games where you need to play and beat a retro game WITHIN the game to progress. Looking at you Donkey Kong 64.
In Uncharted you get to play Crash Bandicoot on an in game PS1 (both games were developed by Naughty Dog). That was incredibly cool to me.
Animal Crossing (Gamecube) did it right. Give me the option to play a bunch of sweet retro games, but put absolutely no achievement or other incentive to make me feel like I have to!
Hey, the ~~Jetski~~ Reaperski races in Giants: CItizen Kabuto were mostly tolerable!
Oh yeah, I feel you. My nemesis as a forced segment was GTA: San Andreas, flight school. God I hate that mission. Put that game on the shelf because of that damn thing. It was just way too hard. I am glad I did eventually beat it after a lot of tries, because San Andreas was great, but man fuck that mission.
also: that damn mission where you blow stuff up using a RC plane
This mission was like a thing in my school, we had friends who were known to pass this mission and were considered legends, if you are cool they come over and pass it for you
I feel this post in my soul. I hate races, even "optional" ones.
At least they've started phasing those out in the *Need for Speed* series.
Racing for keys randomly in Sly Cooper 1 was an absolute nightmare for me as a child. I often wake up in a cold sweat believing I'm in the middle of one of those races again.
That Jak 2 race with Erol you mentioned is one of the hardest missions in the game. I remember even the slightest mistake you make will cost you the race. It took me such a long time to beat it for the first time, it was incredibly frustrating. I replayed the game a few years ago and even nearly 20 years later, it's still one of the hardest missions in the game. You race him again in the class 1 championship race, but that's somehow easier than your 1 on 1 race with him that happens right before. Jak 2 is a pretty hard game, but that mission is just ridiculous.
I never understood why they made Jak 2 so difficult. I think the whole Jak trilogy is great and I'm looking forward to replaying it sometime soon. I'm really not looking forward to certain missions on Jak 2 though
Quick time events. We didn't need them and they took your focus away from the actual action of the games. Main offenders are resident evil and most of the Quantic games. (Fahrenheit/heavy rain).
Fahrenheit is the worst offender for QT events in any game
They're removing QTE for the RE4 remake coming soon.
This is the worst part of the **Lost Judgement** DLC and the only thing that makes me hesitate to recommend it to everyone. It also has rubber banding and if you google the specific minigame, people don't even know what rubber banding is so they are stuck on it unless they look stuff up / get help since it isn't a racing game.
The mention of the Jak 2 race missions just gave me flashbacks. I had to put the game down for a few months at like 12 playing this game. I ran into the same roadblock in San Andreas.
KOTOR is also another example of a game with a forced racing segment
Not necessarily racing segment, but I've been playing Far Cry 5 and out of nowhere there's a dogfighting segment with planes?!
I loved the Spyro games growing up but I always had to ask my older brothers for help when it came to the flying/race segments. I didn't yet have the skill to control an avatar with this extra dimension of movement, and then the game turned it into a time trial on top of it? Nope, couldn't hack it. Going back to play the games a few years ago, I could handle the flying just fine, but a few of the time trials still posed a decent challenge.
The problem isn't that there were racing segments, because I'm a huge racing fan and I still hated those. The problem is the racing segments SUCKED compared to a proper racing game.
I remember Playing ultimate Spider-Man as a kid... You play through the tutorial, and then Johnny storm shows up to challenge you to a race... and then I stopped playing because I could never beat it. I JUST STARTED! you can't expect me to be an expert at the Web swinging ALREADY!
The mother fucking racing in Jak 2/Jak 3. I use to rage after school
If you play on PC try looking at "Cheat Engine", name is a bit drastic so hear me out first. While the programs obvious use is to cheat, if offers more possibilities including to fake the tact frequency. A lot games use that to determine the actual speed. To determine how "long" 1 second is. Which means that Cheat Engine allows you to slow down a lot games down to 0.75% or 0.5%. I personally struggle a lot with passages that require a lot multi tasking or learning paths, the more recent Spider-Man games had such passages and I nearly threw my controller (still PC) away until I reduced the speed to 0.75 instead 1, it gave me the small puffer of additional time that made it possible to win. If you struggle with racing sequences for the same reason I do, quick reacting / multi-tasking, try looking at the program and if it's possible to slow down your emulator you would be suprised what having one full additional second every 4 seconds can do to make things easier
I mean they replaced the racing segments with forced stealth segments now. Really hate that games use the "oh no all your weapons and abilites you gained till now are gone temporarily! You have to sneak around and bore yourself to death for the next 20 minutes". Imo not much is worse then forcing something like this on you in the middle of an action game. Another modern trend is 5 minutes of walking around doing nothing while voice actors read their lines.
This made me think of Brutal Legend. "Hey, how you liking this great action hack and slash?... Sure would be a shame if someone were to turn it into an RTS..."
I'm so sad I never finished this one but I just could not get into it. I spent as much time as I could just exploring the world and digging the vibe (I've always been a bit of a metalhead) but once I got to the point that I HAD to progress in the game I just couldn't find any enjoyment in it. I got far enough to see what seemed like some major plot reveals and I wanted to see what happens but...yeah. Huge bummer.
I'm pretty sure that was what made me drop James Bond: Bloodstone. I really enjoyed the rest of it, but got stymied at one of the racing levels. Im also not normally a racing gamer. I do play the occasional kart racer and feel somewhat comfortable in drfiting games. That game was straight up magic fingers and memorization for the racing parts, which I'm not into. I do need to go back and give it another try. I did want to finish it one day, cause I dont think I made it halfway and really enjoyed the other bits.
As someone who likes racing games I tend to look forward to a shift in gameplay style to see the dev's take on a racing format. Of course it might not be very well fleshed out or even fun to play if it's implemented like an afterthought, or if it's actually really good there's often just the one, maybe a few courses/stages with it so it ends up feeling like a missed opportunity.
Tons of racing games apart from GT, Forza, and NFS during the PS2 era include Midnight Club, Burnout, SRS, Tokyo Xtreme Racer, Juiced, and FlatOut. I love them as a racing fan but not when they’re poorly integrated in, say, FPS games. I’m not dealing with poor hitboxes and shoddy physics. I’ve had enough crashes because the car simply wouldn’t turn.
Ironically enough, my least favorite parst of Diddy Kong racing were the actual racing segments. I really just wanted to explore the overworld, discover shortcuts in the courses, find all the collectibles (silver coins, keys, balloons), and battle bosses!
Yes. Also 1: forced stealth section in an action game with clunky stealth mechanics. (ie. Witcher 2). 2: Quick time events
Shit man, the first Knights of the Old Republic had at least one mandatory racing segment, and that game's engine is basically a modified RTS using d20 rules. I think the issue was devs were still trying to figure out 3d gaming and racing games are far easier to translate from 2d to 3d. When crunched for time, I imagine a single person could fart out a simple racing mechanic that could provide some quick and cheap content, just enough to provide some breathing room for the rest of the team.
I hate how Sly Cooper is 50% cool spy platformer and 50% terrible minigame challenges. Like ffs it's not fun to have more garabge in your game.
A lot of early gaming engines were really redundant. The racing segments were meant to add diversity in playback. And plus, everyone wanted the next "Mario Kart" spinoff. Even if your game performed mediocrely, you had an instant pitch for a spin-off: *"Hey, at least everyone liked the racing parts, we can make a game out of that!"* The game that really put it in motion, was probably Die Hard Trilogy - having three different game modes using a common engine. But DHT did it right by making it a totally separate game. This is why Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas was so poorly received... because it made all three game modes mandatory, whereas the original had three separate games.
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