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

[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.