Well, I’m back! But unfortunately, news has been rather dry this week, so instead of my bi-weekly ‘the week in review’, today I’ll be giving my opinions on some themes in gaming. With this weeks focus being irritating tropes in gaming.
So, we all love video games, the good, the bad, the ugly; we always find something to talk about no matter what, something to enjoy, praise or come back to.
…But let’s be honest, there is a lot of things in gaming these days that are just irritating, aggravating, rage inducing or otherwise just frustrating! I recently played Steep, EA’s snowboarding/ski-ing/wing suiting thing – Since Sony won’t make SSX Deadly Descents a PS4 title, this is all I have to chill out and mellow myself after a particularly angry match of Battlefield or some such. That being said, it’s EA; known for doing stupid stuff – In Steep there are these ‘community challenges’ which unlock unique cosmetics, like helmets, jackets, snowboards, wing suits etc… Yet, you have to complete them solo, so why is it called ‘community’ challenges? Oh and also the challenges themselves are nigh impossible to complete. Stuff like, “get 7000 points on a hard or super short run with basically one jump”, or “complete a super hard rocket suit run staying under such and such feet of elevation”.
I don’t understand this, since rewards given are utterly unique and one time only… So if you can’t complete any of the challenges, you will never get these rewards; and it’s not just Steep that does this, Red Dead Redemption 2 Online does similar stuff with the Wheeler and Co rewards, set to finish this October I believe. You can pick one of three roles, Trader, Collector, Bounty Hunter, and can earn special rewards by doing missions and activates affiliated with each role. But! These missions are mostly utter bullshit. Take the Trader role; in order to rank up with it, all you have to do is kill animals, hoard pelts, teeth, claws, antlers, then deliver them all to such and such location. Easy right? Except that other players can, and will, steal your cargo and all the money its worth, 10 times out of 10. Literally stealing hundreds of dollars’ worth of cargo; and in RDR 2 Online, everything costs hundreds of dollars anyways, so losing five or six hundred dollars because ‘xXpussylord9696Xx‘ sniped you from five hundred feet and stole all your cargo and money after like nine hours of work is a one way ticket to a fit of console-breaking rage.
Continuing on, even when you rank up in these roles and unlock the super unique rewards, you still have to buy them, and they cost a fucking arm and a leg! WHY? Why would you do this Rockstar? Why; what is your excuse or merit for this botchy as hell system?
Another irritating thing I must mention about RDR is does anyone remember GTA Online? Remember how it had twice as many guns as single player? They then proceeded to do the same thing with car insurance and massive amounts of online exclusive guns, vehicles and locations, just to name a handful of things inparticular. I can guarantee that if these expansions where added into the single player, they would sell much better, than being just online exclusive. Give us antisocial people the option!
Speaking of exclusivity in general. Why? It’s stupid and irritating – There have been so many games I’ve wanted so badly to play that have been exclusive to Xbox, or PC; Ori and the Blind Forest (Thankfully now coming to Switch), Dead Rising 3, Starbound, Sunset Overdrive… To just name a few. I missed all these, mainly because:
A) My PC sucked.
…or B) I don’t ever want to touch an Xbox.
Why should I miss out on these awesome games just because I don’t wanna pick sides or favorites? Why is this a thing? Would Xbox not benefit from Halo being on PlayStation? Or vice versa? It makes more sense to me to share stuff around, rather than lock it away like candy. I get it though; it makes money – It sells systems… But in an ideal world, we’d have some form of unity between the contenders.
Recently I was also playing the Ghost Recon: Breakpoint Beta recently on a friends console… And it raised an interesting thought – Why is the RPG gear rarity/score system in everything now? And on this topic, the inclusion of shit being locked behind levelling systems. These two systems baffle me in their stupidity and needless inclusions – Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey and Origins are prime examples of this; now I will say before I get into this, I love Origins – Egypt is amazingly well built and I genuinely love roaming about and getting my groove on in the combat… BUT! The way they did the levelling system kind of sucked, in that even just cutting through an area one or two levels higher than you was nigh impossible. Was it annoying? Yes, minorly so, as was the gear rarity/score system… But it was still fun and unique and done relatively well. I loved using tridents and spears, and I loved the overall RPG theme of things… Until Odyssey came out. Oooooh boy was Odyssey a fucking mess.
They tried to bring back elements of the only good Assassin’s Creed games, namely Black Flag and Origins, but failed horribly – I can sum it all up in one encounter too! In Odyssey there is a boss fight with the Monitor; the mission to start this is labelled as ‘Level 30’, but the boss itself is level 40, and the weapon it gives you requires level 45 to equip! Like, what the flying fuck?!
The Division did the same, Breakpoint is doing it, Dying Light and Dead Island both had it, and I don’t understand it! In The Division it was immersion breaking, having this high rarity/score semi auto rifle which still couldn’t kill a dude with a headshot. In Breakpoint’s Beta it seemed to be the same case, reminding me of Far Cry New Dawn and its bullshit. The whole weapon rarity/weapon score system is stupid, and it makes most games sluggish, slow and irritating, but even that can be done right. Just look at Dying light and Days Gone; they both did the system justice, but games like The Division, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Far Cry New Dawn butcher it, and it hurts those games because of it.
Same said with the level systems. Where guns or outfits are locked behind level requirements, or areas of the map/missions and challenges. Again, Assassin’s Creed Origins did this system well, if a tad clunky and a little annoying… But Assassin’s Creed Odyssey was utterly painful because of it, forcing you to explore the massive world bit by linear bit. Why even have the game be open world when ‘go anywhere, do anything’ is a flat out fucking lie? Skyrim did the same, so did Fallout 4 and 76 – Sure, you can ‘go anywhere’, but from the start of the game? Hell no. So ‘go anywhere’ is basically a lie! It’s really ‘go anywhere, once you’re max level and have the best shit’. It irritates me more than anything.
I could go on and on, but really these few things mentioned above are really just the current trend of things in gaming these days. Let me know your opinions of things in games that annoy and irritate you, and check out some of our other content!
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