The stupidity inherent in video games

[unixronin]

Stupid inconsistencies in video games annoy me.

Take Halo, for example.  It's, god knows, the 35th Century or something, we have faster-than-light starships that can jump across significant parts of the galaxy in weeks, we have fully self-aware AIs on a chip, we have cyborgs in powered battle armor with built-in energy shields, ... but that powered battle armor doesn't have night vision?  Come ON.

This is a common thread in almost every shooter.  (The only exception I'm personally aware of is Ghost Recon.)  Either there is no night vision gear, or there's night vision gear but its batteries last 30 to 45 seconds and then it has to recharge for 2-4 minutes.  As game detail, it's pathetically lame, and as a gameplay device, it's a cop-out at best.  Fer crissakes, we had working, usable night vision gear forty years ago in Vietnam.  It's still chic in many circles to look down our noses at Russian military hardware, but if any Russian equipment designer had dared to offer the Russian military night vision gear that crappy, they would have stood him up against a wall and shot him.

(Naturally, the darkness never impedes the attacking enemies in the least.)

Come on, game designers.  We're talking present-day-to-futuristic here, not THAG BASH THINGS WITH ROCK.  Give it a rest and join the 1990s at least.  If the only way you can achieve the game balance you want is to leave the player stumbling around in the dark, squinting into the monitor trying to see anything more than six feet in front of him, you have failed at game design.

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Comments

[montieth.livejournal.com]

By the 35th Century, the battle armor ought to have IR (Near and far), UV, Sonar, RADAR, LIDAR and everything else but GayDAR for sensors you can turn on and off for passive and active sensing.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And at that point, it should all be automatic and completely transparent to the wearer — it should just present a synthesis of the available sensory data, with options to highlight or suppress specific data bands at need.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

you mean, like, say, a predator...

over the last, er 15-20 years? of predator-alien-marine game variants, some were awesome, some sucked...

apparently the current xbox one is GOOD. you MUST play parts of the game as one of the three choices... possibly even a larval alien :> the predator of course, has vision modes galore, and aliens can just uh "see"... not clear about marines.

but giving you limits, like a flashlight... just adds to the mood, mostly, otherwise, what's the point of having any dark at all if it doesn't hinder you :)

i can't remember the name of the game i was playing most recently last, lots of giant alien spiders and such, but one of the weapon sights used tunneling neutrinos somethings to let you see THROUGH stuff *and* shoot as well. neat.

#

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, darkness should hinder you, sure. It just shouldn't leave you stumbling around trying to see your hand in front of your face and hoping nothing attacks before your night vision or flashlight recharges for the fourth time IN THIS ROOM.

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it should even hinder you. In some games it works just fine as atmosphere.

What you're describing is "good challenge" taken far past its rational extreme and becoming "stupid frustration." I'm as much a fan of artificial difficulty like that, as I am of artificial length in the form of inane key-hunts.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That's an excellent summary.

[luxobscura.livejournal.com]

And by the 35th century, GAYDAR won't be necessary because DA,DT *might* have been rescinded by then.

*might*

[tww1fa]

The poster child for this has to be Doom III. For night vision, you're given a flashlight. A flashlight that you can't use at the same time you have a weapon equipped. I'm a frickin' Space Marine in combat armor and I have to switch from my flashlight to my weapon? Give me a break. There's a reason one of the first mods for Doom III was the "duct tape" fix that attached your flashlight to your weapon.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yup. That is truly a classic of game design failure.

[tww1fa]

Doom III was disappointing. Apart from stupid stuff like the flashlight, it depended too much on "Boo!" as opposed to truly suspenseful and scary level design. For really scary give me Half Life 2's Ravenholm level or Bioshock any day.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Ravenholm was fun, but I've come to dislike Valve games. The ones I've played (mostly HL and HL2 family) seem to have a consistent pattern of stealing away your victory at the moment of victory. "Yes, you won the game, but you're still our bitch and we can do ANYTHING WE WANT to you any time we feel like it. See?" HL2 was particularly bad in that regard; they do it to you no less than three times during the course of the game, if memory serves.

Never played Bioshock, but I've heard good things about it.

[databeast.livejournal.com]

well, HL's "steal your victory" is very much an embedded part of the plotline....shit it's been 11 years now and we STILL don't know who's handling the puppet strings in that games's plot.

Bioshock is more "Victory? foolish puppet, victory requires free will, you are here because we WANTED you here....what?! no I'm not talking to your game character, I'm addressing you, weak fleshbag holding the controller!"

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, still no real clue as to who the "G-Man" is.

The other thing that I tend to dislike about HL is that the gameplay is so linear. There's generally only one way to accomplish any given goal, and generally only one order you can accomplish any given set of goals in.

[databeast.livejournal.com]

Agreed, but what made half-life so 'revolutionary' at the time, was how it convinced you to willingly persue that linear path, under the illusion of free will...

...and it did that by having no loading screens, and the ability to put a pullet in the brain of the NOC who was in the process of telling you vital information...and then wrapping it around a plot that...well.. had no loading screens or cut-scenes.. The original half-life had one of its greatest moments in "...they told me they dragged this thing from the Marianas Trench.. but I don't think that creature saw terrestrial waters until a month ago"... and HL2 did the same thing, all its backstory exposition was done in minor details, photos on walls, stuff you had to look for.

In many ways, I consider the movie PRIMER and HALF LIFE to have something in common.. the complete lack of expositionary dialogue that talks to the player, not the character (though, well, in the context of a game, they HAVE to bend that rule a little.)

but yeah... I'm a huge HL fan, but they need to fucking finish the shit already before nobody cares any more... I could have had a kid getting ready for high school, in the time I've been waiting for this story to come to a close...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, no argument that it was an excellent game (and has aged well, for that matter). I just wish the game designers weren't quite so fond of putting you into blatant no-win situations where you KNOW that the ONLY thing you can do is bend over and drop your pants for them.

[databeast.livejournal.com]

heh, hurry up and get around to playing BioShock then, that'll walk up to your notions of free will in video games, and spit in its face.

But yeah, the no-win situation... I have a feeling that EP3 will be the storyline epitomy of that..

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I think I technically can now that vorlon's running XP Pro instead of 2K Pro. But I strongly suspect I'd still need a significantly faster video card than it now has, not to mention discretionary budget for the game itself.

[databeast.livejournal.com]

I believe it requires DirectX Shader model 3.0, or go home

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

And since vorlon currently has a 6800XT card....

[lwj2.livejournal.com]

Many memories of HL. None good.

[lizzibabe.livejournal.com]

which directly led to patches being written that allowed you to permanently equip the damn flashlight along with your weapon.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

...Which should have been there right out of the box.

[mrmeval.livejournal.com]

Doom3 used darkness very well but it is a cinematic piece. With the duct tape mod to put a light on weapons it's trivially easy to beat most of the game.

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

To some respect, playing an FPS is already like playing with NVGs on.

In real life, my field of view is extremely large. I can make big, almost random changes in orientation and never lose track of where I am, because I've seen enough of the world to have a mental picture assembled even of the things I haven't looked directly at yet. This is a phenomenally cool evolved capability for hunting.

Put on NVGs, though, and your field of vision gets reduced by at least half. Peripheral vision? What's that? Subconscious auto-orientation in surroundings? Nah.

One of the reasons I really dislike outdoor FPSes is for any realistic portrayal of terrain, the number of places someone can hide is so large, and the amount of territory you can see is so small, that to spot any sniper would require divine intervention. If you can see the sniper, then the game fails its realism check. If you can't, then the game fails its playability check.

[luke-jaywalker.livejournal.com]

The usual workaround with snipers - see, Crysis - is to have NPC ones able to seriously hurt you (say, 50% of your full health), but never a one-shot kill unless you're already significantly weakened.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Very true. Though on the latter point, I think Ghost Recon strikes a very workable balance. It can be very hard at times to tell where you're taking fire from.

[databeast.livejournal.com]

most PC game engines will actually allow you to go to console, and set the field-of-view yourself.. usuability of results not guaranteed..

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

well, SOME PC game engines will. But that's still not at all the same. The closest you can get is three or more widescreen monitors in a wrap-around configuration, if you have a game and a video card that supports such a configuration.

[databeast.livejournal.com]

hence the 'usability' remark

3x monitors would be pretty awesome.. one of these days I'll get to try that out

[fatcook.livejournal.com]

Ghost Recon is a good game, but for my money and time, Splinter Cell is the best game for current and cutting edge tech. The newest game has suitcase EMP generators and sonar goggles. The other weapons in game are just as well thought out and behave like they should. Also, body armor works just like it does in real life.
Other than the main character's hyper-strong fingertips and thighs that could crush steel, it's a very workable game.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I have some major gameplay problems with Splinter Cell. I was OK with it — and found it a lot of fun, actually, playing a game that really rewards stealth and sneakiness — up to the first mission that gave me a rifle instead of a pistol, and discovered that there was so much shake built into aiming the rifle that I could not hold the sights on a man-sized target less than twenty meters away. I'd have had better luck throwing the rifle at my target.

That level of artificial handicap is just ... absurd beyond words. If I ever found myself with that much shake in my hands at the range, I would take it as meaning that I needed to cease fire immediately, safe the weapon, take a long break and get some food and fluids into myself. And possibly see a doctor.

[fatcook.livejournal.com]

Which Splinter Cell are you talking about? I don't remember that being a problem.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Whichever one cymrullewes bought me for the PS2. :)

Hang on, I'll go look ...
...It appears to be the original Splinter Cell for PS2.

[fatcook.livejournal.com]

I'm strictly Xbox/360. That was not an issue with my version.
I still strong recommend Conviction. Great game.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I might give it a try on PC sometime. I really try to avoid dedicated game consoles as much as possible. I HATE game-console controllers.

[lwj2.livejournal.com]

Fer crissakes, we had working, usable night vision gear forty years ago in Vietnam. It's still chic in many circles to look down our noses at Russian military hardware, but if any Russian equipment designer had dared to offer the Russian military night vision gear that crappy, they would have stood him up against a wall and shot him.

Large cargo ship at Murmansk. Lots of birch forests nearby. Dull axe. Fill ship, comrade. Tea and maybe even rice when you're done.

[luxobscura.livejournal.com]

One of the things that drives me absolutely insane about Halo 1 and 2, for PC, in multiplayer mode is the inability for the servers to acknowledge that a live round, like a rocket or a thrown grenade, is STILL live even if I die immediately after deploying it. I mean, I can see the grenade flying through the air, even though I'm dead....who knew that ordinance becomes instantly inert if, between the time it's armed/fired and it impacts, the user dies?

I assume that IEDS work like this in real life. Like, if we kill the dude planting it with an Apache or a UAV, the IED becomes instantly harmless and can be ignored.

Also, if spawn killing snipers worked as well IRL as in Halo, we'd need exactly TWO people deployed for the entire War on Terror. One guy in Iraq, and one in Afghanistan.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Also, if spawn killing snipers worked as well IRL as in Halo

I don't think I'm familiar with this technique....

[luxobscura.livejournal.com]

It's where someone gets step up nicely on a perch somewhere with the sniper rifle and just kills everyone iommediately after they respawn. Total game killer. How can you give a flying fuck about the game if you just get killed a half second after you respawn *every* time?

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Ah, gotcha.

Honestly, I tend to feel that simply being able to do that is indicative of poor game design. But then, I really have very little interest in respawn-on-demand deathmatch games anyway. I find them mindlessly shallow and completely non-involving.

[johnkzin.livejournal.com]

I seem to recall that, in single player gaming, Delta Force 2 got both darkness and camouflage (specifically, a ghillie suit) right. The computer controlled enemies would actually walk right past you, etc. Muzzle flash, and certain movement, might give your presence away, but again, that didn't suddenly make you 100% visible. If you made too much noise knifing a guard (or didn't kill him on the first attack, and he yelled out), then other guards in the area would be on alert, but not necessarily know right where you were.

But, at least with the ghillie suit, in PvP play, you could (as a human) easily look at the grass and tell the difference between a bush, and a ghillie suit. Even from way far away, through the sites of your barret... Sort of disappointing. I don't recall if I played any night time missions.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Ghost Recon does it pretty well, too.

I'll fail to see that, and raise you...

[mrakg.livejournal.com]

"Fail to see" because my flashlight batteries are recharging, again....

Another pet peeve is the inevitable "jump between little, optionally moving, platforms with optional killer pendulums to get to the next stage" game design cop-out. It does NOTHING to advance the plot, makes no logical sense in the setting [See "Galaxy Quest" for a good take on THAT], and is just there to reinforce that targeting and firing are well-done, but movement mechanics inevitably suck.

I agree with the notion that futuristic battle armor and mechs should just present a human-usable synthesis of whatever sensory information is available in the area without the operator having to think about it.

As for future Gaydar...not necessary. My Halo Spartan is _lavender_. [Another Haloverse pet peeve...fixed armor colors? No smart camouflage?]

Re: I'll fail to see that, and raise you...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Another pet peeve is the inevitable "jump between little, optionally moving, platforms with optional killer pendulums to get to the next stage" game design cop-out. It does NOTHING to advance the plot, makes no logical sense in the setting [See "Galaxy Quest" for a good take on THAT], and is just there to reinforce that targeting and firing are well-done, but movement mechanics inevitably suck.

I'll second that one. If I want to play a platformer (which I don't) I'll haul out Donkey Kong or something. Gratuitous gymnastics stages like that are not just frustrating, they actively break immersion.

[lizzibabe.livejournal.com]

and allow me to add insufficient save points during platformers for an added level of hair-tearing frustration. I was an ardent fan of the Ratchet & Clank series because of sufficient save points that allowed me to pick up and move on immediately after a death. This all changed with R&C: Up Yer Arsenal when I had to deal with a stupid mash-the-buttons-to-mimic-the-screen game. It took me *ages* to pass that little test. I utterly gave up on the game when I died before the end of the level and got sent back to just *before* the stupid button mashing game.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I think the problem is that there are game designers out there who have yet to learn that "frustrating" and "challenging" are not equivalent. Personally I think the whole idea of fixed savepoints needs to be kicked out the window. I can see having SHORT "critical sections" that you're not allowed to save in the middle of, but aside from that, there is no good argument for fixed savepoints. One of my pet peeves with Far Cry is the sheer number of times you run into a savepoint unexpectedly and think, "Damn, if I'd KNOWN this savepoint was here, I'd have run over and picked up that dropped ammunition/armor/weapon first. Now, if I have to restore from here, it won't be there."