That little thing that ruins (or almost ruins) a great game

[cityside75]

Sometimes you love everything about a game, except for that ONE thing. That one thing annoys you every time you play and you wish so badly that you could just go back and get that one thing changed/removed from the game...

Here's mine: The original Starfox got me back into gaming after I missed the entire NES era. So naturally, I was greatly anticipating Starfox 64 when it was announced. I couldn't wait to see what they could to with the improved hardware. Starfox 64 was one of THE reasons I went with the N64 instead of the Playstation.

So, at the time Nintendo was trying to prove that carts could be just as good as CD's in terms of multimedia. Specifically, they were touting that Starfox 64 would have as much spoken dialogue as a typical CD-based game, and boy did it. To this day, I find the voices to be almost universally grating with Slippy being especially annoying. The game sounds like a Nicktoons show and I wish I could go back and tell them to lose the voices, they're so unnecessary to the game and didn't prove a thing in the cd vs. cart debate.

[Pichu]

Oh man that sucks.
I have a pet peeve like that:

MySims for Wii, and the loading times kill it.
I love it, because I can do all sorts of things,
but everytime I go into a house, I gotta wait 15-30 seconds.

Thankfully Kingdom removed that.

[gamedude45]

the glitches and the ending for Fallout 3 almost ruined the game for me. It seemed like every time I played that game i'd find a raider/super mutant stuck in a wall shooting at me man that's annoying. and the ending just sucked and you can't continue after you beat the game I'm just lucky I had a save from right before the end or I would have never went back to the game and I would have missed out on hours of exploring and weapon finding which was a truly enjoyable experiance.

also in Pokemon Blue I was pretty close to catching missingno once. thankfully I didn't cause i'm pretty sure that would have ruined Pokemon for me.

[Pichu]

Oh yeah, I hate games where you're stuck at the looping final boss.

Mario and Luigi Partners in Time anyone?

[Kiddo]

The various games that require multi-playthroughs just to get the "Good" ending?

Besides the Ghouls n' Ghosts line which tends to abuse this, I recall "Flying Dragon" annoyed me with this as well. (On TOP of the "Collect the items which have to be obtained through bizarre methods" thing...)

Poor English dubbing mangled a few games other than StarFox 64 as well. Sonic Adventure piled it on top of poor lipsynching which made cutscenes look amateur-ish, for example.

And, of course, any RPG that totally needs a strategy guide to get past without random guessing.

[Dangerboy]

Any open world game that doesn't allow you to save anywhere.

I'm looking right at you Borderlands, you heartless bastard. The game would have been amazing were it not for that little screw up.

[Therealqtip]

Paper Mario 2 had it bad for me, sometimes you'd be stuck at a boss (2nd to last boss right here) I couldn't kill him and have enough health potions to fight the last boss. So I made this elaborate scheme that I would kill so many monsters in the begining of the castle come back kill 2nd to last boss then level up so I'd have full health and FP. That's bullshit what kind of game is that? Oh god now don't get me started on the very last fight. What the fuck is this? Final Fantasy? I've seen this god forsaken 10 minute cut scene 2145215 times. oh and if that wasn't enough..they give you another 10 minute cut scene in the middle of the battle! God the ending basically ruins the game. That's another game I can't beat cause I hate those cut scenes and now it's been to long I'd have to relearn all the moves

[XYXZYZ]

Double Dragon III, NES- you only get one life. You can acquire new characters along the way, but you still have to be good enough to get to them; it's just not the same. I did manage to finish it twice, though.

Gradius games- You get your ship powered up and if you die, you start back at a checkpoint with a ship that's too slow and underpowered to stand up to the shit thrown at you in the middle of the stage. I know that's part of the challenge of Gradius and I'm not man enough to step up to it, but I cut my teeth on Life Force (NES) so it's a but much to me. I don't play Gradius or Parodius because of this.

RPGs (or any game really) that have a cool female character I like, and she develops a love interest with some shmuck I hate.

Cool shmup ports where they remove tate mode for the western release. I won't play them.

New Super Mario Bros. Wii- They obviously have a great game here, but I just can't use that fucking sideways wiimote . One of these days I'll have to hack a wiimote into a joystick.

[MissingNo_1231]

also in Pokemon Blue I was pretty close to catching missingno once. thankfully I didn't cause i'm pretty sure that would have ruined Pokemon for me.

MissingNo. was one of the most trusted members of my team. Sure, all the text in the game got corrupted, and eventually my save file got erased, but it was totally worth it, lol.

Baten Kaitos on Gamecube has some of the nicest graphics on the system, but also some of the worst voice acting ever. Almost ruins the game for me.

[Cryomancer]

I call this phenomenon "Meat Circus".

[The 1 2 P]

Mine is simple since I just beat this game last month. Quantum of Solace for the 360. I played thru the entire campaign on the hardest difficulty and loved it. I'm a huge fan of Casino Royale(which you get to play thru flashbacks of that movie as well as QoS) so this game just expanded the movie even more for me. Now for my beef....

After I finsihed beating the game I went and played the online multiplayer to check it out and get some extra achievements. So why the hell did it keep making me swing my fist everytime I was aiming at a dude and trying to kill him? I figured this out a few days later when checking for an achievement guide online. Apparently theres a melee button on the controller somewhere. Funny thing is, it doesn't mention any melee button in the instruction manual. It doesn't even mention it on the controller menu of the options screen. And how come it never made me try to melee anyone thru out the entire 7-10 hour campaign that I played thru? Again, apparently this "magical" button was made for online play only so that you could get a certain melee achievement. But if you don't know that and go into multiplayer, 50% of the time that you try and kill someone by aiming at them will get you killed because it will make you swing(as if you are trying to melee them) while they shoot back at you.

So that one little thing ruined the entirety of multiplayer. And even though I now know what that mysterious button is, they still should have never put it there because you can still accidentally hit it. Plus, why the fuck would you add a button feature and not mention it in the instructions?

[Orion Pimpdaddy]

The wall jump in Super Metroid.

There's a part where they force you to use it, where they have little critters demonstrate it for you. However, executing it is very hard. It seems like they didn't finish the wall jump controls. To top it off, that part is close to a save point, so if you save right before you do it, you can be stuck there for a long time.

The rest of the game is spectacular, which makes that difficult part stand out more (in a bad way) than it would in other games.

[bitrate]

NES Dragon Warrior 4 is one of my favorite games of all time. However, there is one "feature" in this game that nearly ruined it for me - the artificial intelligence given to the other members of your party during battles.
I can understand where they were trying to go with this, but I can remember it being a collosal disappointment after playing previous Dragon Warrior games where you had control of your party members.

[Aussie2B]

Yeah, I'll second the "no save between battles". I don't care if the battles are quick, but in something like a strategy RPG where each can take upwards of an hour? Yeah, fuck you, developers. That was one of the main things that really soured me on Valkyrie Profile on DS. Once you get about halfway through the game, practically every battle is either a double battle like that or, equally as annoying, "protect so-and-so from dying" battles, where of course the A.I. is horrible and you can lose a battle purely by bad luck and no fault of your own.

For something more game-specific: the whip sound effect in Castlevania Bloodlines. Drives me nuts.

[j_factor]

For something more game-specific: the whip sound effect in Castlevania Bloodlines. Drives me nuts.

Then play as Eric Lecarde.

[ccovell]

Unskippable training levels in modern (and newer 2D) games.

"Edge" and Angst.

[Aussie2B]

Then play as Eric Lecarde.

I know that. :P I like using both characters.

[Rogue]

The wall jump in Super Metroid.

There's a part where they force you to use it, where they have little critters demonstrate it for you. However, executing it is very hard. It seems like they didn't finish the wall jump controls. To top it off, that part is close to a save point, so if you save right before you do it, you can be stuck there for a long time.

The rest of the game is spectacular, which makes that difficult part stand out more (in a bad way) than it would in other games.

Really?

I think that's very easy! Actually, the Super Mario 64' wall kick is harder. I mean, not to execute, but, like in the 15th course, you have to do a lot of times to get all the blue coins. If you're going for a record and miss one, you have to restart the whole course! Not just this tiny part, like Metroid.

On that part you can even turn a ball in the air and get inside the entrance to get an extra missile.
And in the later parts of the game when you get used to it, it helps a lot.
I really think that's pretty easy... =)

[Orion Pimpdaddy]

Really?

I think that's very easy! Actually, the Super Mario 64' wall kick is harder. I mean, not to execute, but, like in the 15th course, you have to do a lot of times to get all the blue coins. If you're going for a record and miss one, you have to restart the whole course! Not just this tiny part, like Metroid.

On that part you can even turn a ball in the air and get inside the entrance to get an extra missile.
And in the later parts of the game when you get used to it, it helps a lot.
I really think that's pretty easy... =)

I tried the Metroid wall jump many, many times over a span of a decade. I can usually get a few jumps, but that's it. To get past that part I have to resort to cheating by turning into a ball, and using the turbo button to bomb my way up the passage.

I do see Youtube videos of people using the technique very easily, but for me, wall jumping is something I'm not good at, like sewing.

[Rogue]

I tried the Metroid wall jump many, many times over a span of a decade. I can usually get a few jumps, but that's it. To get past that part I have to resort to cheating by turning into a ball, and using the turbo button to bomb my way up the passage.

I do see Youtube videos of people using the technique very easily, but for me, wall jumping is something I'm not good at, like sewing.

hmm... crazy. Well, I don't like alternative controllers or cheating, so I'll not give up if I notice where's the problem.

But, did you notice that you need to be spinning in the air for it to work, right? And just press the other direction and jump "almost" at the same time.. Samus even change the animation... =P
Walk before jump > she'll spin
Jump before walk > no spin
It can be interpreted as:
D-Pad before jump button > spin
Jump button before D-Pad > no spin
Same thing to jump on the wall. D-Pad first. So it will work.