I love games. If I’m not playing them I’m writing about them, and if I’m not engaging in either of the former two, rest assured that some aspect of gaming will be playing on my mind. There’s undoubtedly a great deal of emotive feedback to be extracted from the playing experience; psychological responses such as elation, anxiety and fear, as well as physical, adrenaline induced reactions to on-screen scenarios. One inevitable aspect of gaming I’m sure we can all relate to, no matter how fervently we engage in our passion is that of frustration.
Some of us deal with game related irritation more effectively than others; the latter may well be reduced to pad smashing fits of rage whilst the former will calmly power down the console and collect themselves. The manner in how we deal with videogame vexation could arguably be subjective to each player’s individual personality, but let’s face it, sometimes the developers themselves would appear to be pretty unremorseful in toying with our psychological wellbeing. OK, so I’m exaggerating a little there, but let’s take a look at some gaming gripes (both relatively minor and major) that could well be the catalyst for some serious gritting of teeth and uncontrollable fuse blowing…
Respawning enemies - Leaping out of invisible portals, this is digital reincarnation exemplified. Hordes of never ending, generic clones, each one baying for blood and backed up by a factory line of cohorts. Yep, the respawning enemy, whom depending on the circumstance can be intensely irritating and detrimental to progress and enjoyment. Overwhelming waves of foes stand between you and your objective, with the doom laden sense of hopelessness washing over you with each one you kill - “there’s more where that came from“. Sometimes it just feels plain unfair going up against seemingly insurmountable odds, where tightly honed skills and unrivalled patience are your only allies and your key to victory.
Call Of Duty World at War; playing on veteran, the experience at best is unforgiving and at worst almost suicide inducing. One level that many players still have nightmares over is the relentlessly punishing ‘Heart of the Reich’. Four flak cannons, one checkpoint and an army of ruthlessly accurate, grenade spamming respawners. I’ve been informed that after the third cannon they actually stop respawning, but I’ll hold my hands up; this section drove me so mad that I had to rage quit for fear of introducing my 360 to the window. It wouldn’t have been so painful had the enemies not respawned, but every time a square inch of terrain was covered the grenades rained down and I was forced back by the unyielding tide. Criticize my gaming skills if you will, but I admitted defeat at the hands of respawning Nazis.
Call Of Duty World at War; playing on veteran, the experience at best is unforgiving and at worst almost suicide inducing. One level that many players still have nightmares over is the relentlessly punishing ‘Heart of the Reich’. Four flak cannons, one checkpoint and an army of ruthlessly accurate, grenade spamming respawners. I’ve been informed that after the third cannon they actually stop respawning, but I’ll hold my hands up; this section drove me so mad that I had to rage quit for fear of introducing my 360 to the window. It wouldn’t have been so painful had the enemies not respawned, but every time a square inch of terrain was covered the grenades rained down and I was forced back by the unyielding tide. Criticize my gaming skills if you will, but I admitted defeat at the hands of respawning Nazis.
Harshly placed checkpoints - D.H Lawrence once said “But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions”. Ok so I just looked that up on Google, but its relevance outweighs my inability to pluck meaningful quotes out of thin air. There are obviously some exceptions in life, but on the whole, repetition tends to lean towards the undesirable. In the case of videogames, unless we’re awestruck by some masterpiece of design or bowled over by aesthetic beauty, repeating the same section over and over again becomes very tiresome, very quickly. Admittedly this is most likely to occur on harder difficulty settings, so in that sense such circumstances can be avoided, but sometimes the space between those tension relieving checkpoints is unnecessarily harsh. Play, die, repeat is a cycle that causes sweaty palms to collide with exasperated foreheads.
To be fair however, most games these days are pretty generous with checkpoints (not you Demon’s Souls - you’re one inexorable exception), so when an instance occurs where this is not the case, there’s a tendency to feel unjustly treated. Maybe that’s the point then - we gamers have too much of an easy ride these days. Let’s not forget that it wasn’t an age ago that once the lives had trickled down to zero and all your continues had slowly absconded, you simply had to get over it and start again. In the modern era however, I personally tend to submit to frustration a hell of a lot quicker than I did in my gaming youth. This means that the occasional instance of epic-trek checkpoint passing, particularly in an already abhorrent section of the game results in a severe grinding of the gears.
To be fair however, most games these days are pretty generous with checkpoints (not you Demon’s Souls - you’re one inexorable exception), so when an instance occurs where this is not the case, there’s a tendency to feel unjustly treated. Maybe that’s the point then - we gamers have too much of an easy ride these days. Let’s not forget that it wasn’t an age ago that once the lives had trickled down to zero and all your continues had slowly absconded, you simply had to get over it and start again. In the modern era however, I personally tend to submit to frustration a hell of a lot quicker than I did in my gaming youth. This means that the occasional instance of epic-trek checkpoint passing, particularly in an already abhorrent section of the game results in a severe grinding of the gears.
Fixed cameras - There’s a couple of things to establish here. Firstly, this a very minor and petty gripe on my behalf; it doesn’t really affect the game drastically in anyway, just an occasional and mild irritance. Secondly, games that have fixed cameras throughout their course (eg God Of War) are exempt from blame. It’s when your granted full control of the camera - 360 degree panoramic movement for the majority of playing time, and then all of a sudden for some inexplicable reason it becomes rooted the spot. It could be argued that the developers do this for specific cinematic effect; to take in a sweeping vista or engage you with a point of particular poignancy for example, yet often this isn’t the case.
Recently, in Enslaved, the curse of the stubborn camera reared its ugly head on more than one occasion. 95% of the time you're free to manoeuvre the camera at will in conjunction with Monkey’s athletic prowess, then occasionally, out of the blue it’s suddenly glued to a piece of post apocalyptic masonry. As I mentioned, this can be done with good reason, and admittedly Enslaved does occasionally implement constrictive cameras to force the player to intake their surroundings. However, if I’m being made to stare at a piece of dilapidated wall or a rusty pipe when I’d rather get a decent view of some cunningly placed, out of reach orbs; it’s an avoidable displeasure that a continued use of free camera movement would have overcome. Petty, paltry and petulant, yet personally, still an occasionally raised complaint when playing third person games. Maybe I’ll get over it one day…
Recently, in Enslaved, the curse of the stubborn camera reared its ugly head on more than one occasion. 95% of the time you're free to manoeuvre the camera at will in conjunction with Monkey’s athletic prowess, then occasionally, out of the blue it’s suddenly glued to a piece of post apocalyptic masonry. As I mentioned, this can be done with good reason, and admittedly Enslaved does occasionally implement constrictive cameras to force the player to intake their surroundings. However, if I’m being made to stare at a piece of dilapidated wall or a rusty pipe when I’d rather get a decent view of some cunningly placed, out of reach orbs; it’s an avoidable displeasure that a continued use of free camera movement would have overcome. Petty, paltry and petulant, yet personally, still an occasionally raised complaint when playing third person games. Maybe I’ll get over it one day…
Defending the senseless - Artificial intelligence these days (on the whole) is vastly improved from previous generations. In that respect this gripe is slightly less relevant than once it was. I’ll initially draw on a particular example from back in the day to illustrate the point. Goldeneye 007; synonymous with words like ‘classic’, ‘legendary’, as well as a host of other nostalgia fuelled labels of appraisal and rightly so.
As prestigious and indeed important as Goldeneye was, the AI of the time left a lot to be desired, not just of enemies but of allies also. One particular mission late on; ‘Control’ I seem to recall, you were tasked with protecting Natalya throughout. The only catch in this reasonably simple sounding premise was that Natalya happened to be burdened with the intellectual capacity of a tadpole. Especially on the harder difficulty settings she’d dance happily into a volley of gunfire like a particularly stupid moth to an intensely hot flame. Of course her imbecilic actions often resulted in your premature downfall as she disregarded all dangers around her in favor of an early grave. We’ll let Natalya off because of Goldeneye’s historical context within videogames, but at the time, her harebrained attitude to life was enough to make the blood boil.
A more relevant example of such instances of allied intellectual shortcomings would be in Resident Evil 5. OK, so to experience RE5 at its most prolific you really need to be partnered by another human rather than accompanying a computer controlled Sheva. But, for those of us whom for whatever reason (none of our friends had RE5, none of our friends are gamers or we just had no friends) were lumbered with our incompetent AI ally, were subjected to a rather torrid time. Stealing vital health sprays and ammo, running headlong into chainsaw wielding maniacs or using the aforementioned health sprays on you after suffering a small scratch, were all factors that made Sheva more of a burden than a reliable compadre. The real issue here is having to deal with situations that to an extent are out of the players hands, and as such are unfair to be asked to contend with. The whole experience of RE5 was soured for me by Sheva’s cumbersome AI. Fair enough the title is geared towards two player co-op, but that doesn’t mean the single player element should suffer as result; rendering your partner a hindrance rather than a co-operative helping hand. Very irritating indeed.
As prestigious and indeed important as Goldeneye was, the AI of the time left a lot to be desired, not just of enemies but of allies also. One particular mission late on; ‘Control’ I seem to recall, you were tasked with protecting Natalya throughout. The only catch in this reasonably simple sounding premise was that Natalya happened to be burdened with the intellectual capacity of a tadpole. Especially on the harder difficulty settings she’d dance happily into a volley of gunfire like a particularly stupid moth to an intensely hot flame. Of course her imbecilic actions often resulted in your premature downfall as she disregarded all dangers around her in favor of an early grave. We’ll let Natalya off because of Goldeneye’s historical context within videogames, but at the time, her harebrained attitude to life was enough to make the blood boil.
A more relevant example of such instances of allied intellectual shortcomings would be in Resident Evil 5. OK, so to experience RE5 at its most prolific you really need to be partnered by another human rather than accompanying a computer controlled Sheva. But, for those of us whom for whatever reason (none of our friends had RE5, none of our friends are gamers or we just had no friends) were lumbered with our incompetent AI ally, were subjected to a rather torrid time. Stealing vital health sprays and ammo, running headlong into chainsaw wielding maniacs or using the aforementioned health sprays on you after suffering a small scratch, were all factors that made Sheva more of a burden than a reliable compadre. The real issue here is having to deal with situations that to an extent are out of the players hands, and as such are unfair to be asked to contend with. The whole experience of RE5 was soured for me by Sheva’s cumbersome AI. Fair enough the title is geared towards two player co-op, but that doesn’t mean the single player element should suffer as result; rendering your partner a hindrance rather than a co-operative helping hand. Very irritating indeed.
TERRIBLE voice acting - My first real introduction to shocking voice acting in games was the original Resident Evil (apologies for the over abundance of Resident Evil related examples). Jill, Chris, Barry and Co. were so wooden you sometimes wondered if you were wandering around a zombie infested lumber mill instead of a remote mansion. In fact though, the dreadful B-Movie voice ‘talent’ was in a strange way rather endearing; the eternal words “Whoa - you were almost a Jill sandwich!” will be forever etched in gaming folklore.
Sometimes however, there’s a very fine line between humoring horrendous acting and been driven to distraction by it. With bigger budgets in the modern era, companies can afford to hire somewhat more of a stellar cast than was previously possible. Games like Uncharted 2, Enslaved and for the most part Red Dead Redemption provide some pretty solid performances from their main protagonists. Perhaps as a result, this shift in trend highlights the lacklustre acting exemplifications in gaming more than ever before. I was adamantly against the shift from text boxes to voice acting in Final Fantasy X. If anything, I found the game less immersive and in a sense less ‘charming’ than previous FF incarnations due to the obnoxious voice-overs. Final Fantasy XIII (I’ll admit I never played 11 or 12 - shame on me) had a particularly irritating line up of actors for the English translation. Vanille’s relentlessly chirpy and high pitched vocal tones remorselessly grated rather than captivated; the mute button often offering an all too tempting release from the irritation.
Some games rather than have terrible acting so to speak just have their protagonists conform to monotonous stereotypes. The husky, gravelly tones of the all round ‘ass-kicking’ Gears Of War heroes doesn’t necessarily detract from a game that is far more effective at dealing with massive guns and explosions than an emotive narrative. However, Gears 2 fell into the pitfall of attempting to use the latter to powerful effect. Call me heartless, but I’d wager that the majority of gamers were not too concerned with poor Dom losing his wife, but rather were more focused on getting back to slaughtering the Locust horde. I feel the characters of Gears are more or less irrelevant. I’m not connected to Dom’s plight in anyway because he’s just a generic Locust killing machine. As I said, the acting of the Gears cast is by no means rubbish; but personally I’m not buying into the sob story aspect as these characters are simply ineffective tools which to try and pull off ‘emotional’ story telling.
Sometimes however, there’s a very fine line between humoring horrendous acting and been driven to distraction by it. With bigger budgets in the modern era, companies can afford to hire somewhat more of a stellar cast than was previously possible. Games like Uncharted 2, Enslaved and for the most part Red Dead Redemption provide some pretty solid performances from their main protagonists. Perhaps as a result, this shift in trend highlights the lacklustre acting exemplifications in gaming more than ever before. I was adamantly against the shift from text boxes to voice acting in Final Fantasy X. If anything, I found the game less immersive and in a sense less ‘charming’ than previous FF incarnations due to the obnoxious voice-overs. Final Fantasy XIII (I’ll admit I never played 11 or 12 - shame on me) had a particularly irritating line up of actors for the English translation. Vanille’s relentlessly chirpy and high pitched vocal tones remorselessly grated rather than captivated; the mute button often offering an all too tempting release from the irritation.
Some games rather than have terrible acting so to speak just have their protagonists conform to monotonous stereotypes. The husky, gravelly tones of the all round ‘ass-kicking’ Gears Of War heroes doesn’t necessarily detract from a game that is far more effective at dealing with massive guns and explosions than an emotive narrative. However, Gears 2 fell into the pitfall of attempting to use the latter to powerful effect. Call me heartless, but I’d wager that the majority of gamers were not too concerned with poor Dom losing his wife, but rather were more focused on getting back to slaughtering the Locust horde. I feel the characters of Gears are more or less irrelevant. I’m not connected to Dom’s plight in anyway because he’s just a generic Locust killing machine. As I said, the acting of the Gears cast is by no means rubbish; but personally I’m not buying into the sob story aspect as these characters are simply ineffective tools which to try and pull off ‘emotional’ story telling.
Anyhow, enough griping for now as I’m starting to sound like a bitter and twisted old man who hates everything about games, which I assure you is far from the case.
Part 2 to follow...
Part 2 to follow...
Email This
BlogThis!
Share to Twitter
Share to Facebook