Games that could have been good but had fatal flaws

Well, I enjoyed the game, and didn't find it too hard (a friend of mine did though). The navigation system was crap, I hate those car lights. Getaway Black Monday was a huge disappointment for me as I didn't like the characters and found it boring.

I agree with you 100% on the backlight. I prefer the old design over the GBA SP, but I almost lost my sight playing Mario Kart Super Circuit on my old GBA.

 

While most of those elements worked horribly in the game, in theory some could have worked fine if done correctly and tuned better. They removed the skills because the first game had too many different ways to improve your character, and many of them were redundant. Why have skills to raise your swimming/aiming/melee, and have augs, and weapon mods to improve other aspects. You could easily group all of those choices into one or two categories(augs and mods for example) and still allow the same amount of choice for the player. Anything that would have been improved through a skill system could be included in the augs.

I also think the first dx had too many different types of ammo. While I having only one type of ammo for all weapons is too limiting, having one type of ammo for each catogory of weapons(heavy,light,melee) would be easier to manage while still forcing the player to think about conserving ammo and being smart about how they approach enemy encounters.

When it comes to the small, cramped levels it's pretty obvious they were not originally designed that way. In a lot of levels you can tell the rooms were made with much higher ceilings at one point, but that they had to shorten them because of performance issues. There was an interview with Spector where he said that they hired someone to add in the lighting and that he had misrepresented the amount of experience he had in such work, and that his code was very slow and sloppy. By that time it was too far into development to redo it, and so they had to scale back many of the environments.

For the most part the goals set by Ion for IW were great, but at the same time required a lot more work then making a game like DX. They had intended to offer the player more choice then any game of that type had ever done, but sadly it was rocky development and the game was rushed out way too early. Warren Spector also said something before the release of the game that they were taking a lot of risks when it came to all of the new things they were trying, and that they could very well fail. But that if they did they would atleast know it wasn't because they were lazy or took the easy way out, but because they tried to push the envelope too far. I think he said something like "failing gloriously".

 

Agreed, the first edition was spot on in terms of gameplay. If you look through the graphics it is one of the best games on the system IMHO.

THAT is what Sonic Adventure should have been like!

 

While it doesn't seem perfect, with some more polish and a little less switching from 3d to 2d and it could easily be a terrific game. I like the idea of playing a classic style sonic game and half way through a level having it switch to something like sonic adventure, but it would need to be more fluid, and would probably work best if it only went 3D for "special events" like a massive jump/spiral or boss battles(ala Sonic Rush).

 

I think Super Paper mario should have taken cues from this level. It's too one-sided in its 3d Mode, giving a feeling of void emptyness

 

Sorry for being pedantic, but wasn't the original GBA SP frontlit? I only ask that because I recall people praising the 'super-bright' SP as a proper backlit version.

Still was a great improvement, though.

 

I think so yes, though I think the later GBA Micro is back lit

 

GBA = no lights

GBAsp= front-lit

GBAsp ver.2 = back-lit (With nintendo brick-DS brightness)

GBA micro= back-lit

DSlite= Light-house!

 

PSP = Staring at the Sun :110:

 

DS Lite is brighter than PSP.

 

Really? Well, whatever. The PSP screen is a pain in the ass to keep clean, too.

Oh well, at least I don't have any dead pixels.

 

These are the ones I have always been thinking about

Silent Hill (graphics, camera angle, gameplay)
Vigilante 8 (physics, damage models, size of arenas)
Tenchu (control system, draw distance, animation)

All rough diamonds

 

Silent Hill had ground breaking graphics at the time of release. I remember the magazines raving about the snow effects outside and the general design of the models.

 

Sonic Adventure 1 & 2: The camera was aweful. It truly pissed me off that even for the Sonic DX rereleased nothing was fixed! I mean what is wrong with Sonic Team?

Auto Modellista: My god... I remeber going nuts over the previews for this game. The cell-shading look just had me entranced, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. However, while it is quite the marvel to look at, the car handling in the game was aweful. Had they just taken abit more time and fixed this I wouldn't have stopped playing the game after an hour.

Sonic & The Secret Rings: This game definitely has the potential. I loved the gameplay, I dug the controls. But, still the game had some major things wrong with it.

[FONT=&quot]1. Unnecessary missions: Now when it comes to making use of levels in multiple ways I've always been a fan. In fact both Super Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine were able to do this in a perfect way. The problem is, is that in Sonic's case it didn't feel like these extra missions were there b/c it would be a fun thing. But, rather to simply prolong a otherwise short game (I mean compare the 5 star per level ways of SM64 to the 100 missions in SaTsR). I don't mind the guys reusing their levels, as they are indeed gorgeous, but when you only give a player 8 different worlds it gives the player no variety. Whereas I might complete one star in Super Mario 64 and come back to the others after improving my skills in other levels. In Sonic you simply really had no other levels to explore before revisiting levels you had already expereinced. It simply got boring. Had the devs worked on this game hard and long giving the player more diverse worlds and levels it would've been alot more fun.


2. The voiceacting, the music.
I did enjoy the music for levels which had no vocals in it. Sega really needs to get some good VG music in their games. The music was just annoying as hell! So atroucious that I muted the thing for most of the game.

As for the voice acting...wtf... it literally made me cringe.

3. The Story. I actually enjoyed the story in Sonic Adventure 2, it was interesting. But, the story in this game was so aweful that just about any person I know could of come up with something better. Sonic definititely shouldn't be a story-heavy game. But, it should have a plot that isn't incredibly childish, especially for the demographic that they are aiming for.

But, hopefully they'll fix a few flaws next time around.
[/FONT]

 

Its been some time since I played it but it worth to mention, since this glitch make the game almost unfinishable

Enter the Matrix
I enjoyed this game, the controls were ok altough the gameplay was a bit too fast, I played the PC version in an old pc/video card which slowed the game a bit but made it look & feel far more natural IMO
But this game had a fatal glitch, when you played with Ghost there's a car chase level where Niobe (CPU) drives and you shoot from the window.
The problem is Niobe cant drive the fckng car and randomly crashes into walls and cars and the worst is getting the car stuck between the pillars in the tunnel.
So she goes forward and CRASH! hits the front pillar! She reverses and CRASH! hits the pillar behind her, and then repeats and repeats until you get shot to death. Like that situation in Austion Powers with the kart stuck in the tunnel.

 

Silent Hill 1? From the magazines I remember reading, they complaigned about slowdown and grainy graphics, but aside from that they liked them.

I liked the whole thing, but it is pretty grainy.

 

At the time it was normal that a mag said it sucked while the other said it was the best game ever, since it sometimes it depended on how much ads sony had in the mag...

 

I could be wrong lol, the European press does seem to differ from the American press when it comes to games reviews. I remember rave reviews and thinking back I thought the graphics at the time, probably got the reviews for its story/gameplay.

probably was an official PS magazine

 

That's because the GC has a G3, not a G4.

G3 = Made by IBM, early models by Motorola
G4 = Made by Motorola\Freescale
G5 = Made by IBM

So really, if it's made by IBM, it sucks.

 

It was lol. US OPM. Gamers Republic said the same though I remember. I still loved the game but it was grainy, but its psone.