So.. Number 2 on my list of annoyances in videogames (in no particular order). Superfluous Press whichever Button! This actually stopped me from playing through the greatest videogame in the history of man kind (in fact, the history of the universe, judging by it's diciples); Metal Gear Solid 2. The number of keypresses required just to be able to move an arthritis-ridden, stooping, smoking old geezer around the screen proved too much for me. I did not even finish the first level. It went straight to Gamestop, where I could at least recuperate some of my money. So much the better that the gamestudios never see a dime of that extra value generated from the second hand market. It is my one and only way of letting them know that I do not appreciate them wasting my time. By the way, MGS2 is by no means the only one, it just happends to be the worst one I've experienced so far. The post isn't about MGS2 in particular, but about consolegames in general.
First, there's just about 600.000 logos, pictures og god knows what, god knows why, and videos. This all invariably results in vigorous keypresses, on just about any key there is on the controller. I've also resorted to picking up any other controllers connected to the console in question, just in case there's a bug. To no avail, ofcourse. Who, in their right mind, thinks that I care who made the soundengine?? Or, more accurately, who thinks that I care about it so much, that I will find this information interesting, not only before I play the game for the first time, but every single time I play it?? This can not wait untill the credits roll?? This, I think, can be likened to prominently, for 15 minutes, dispaying the name of the gaffer before every movie shown. (No, I don't know what a 'gaffer' is either. But I know every movie have one.)
Then there's the "Press Start". Ok... Well, I've spent some time considering this, and I've come to the conclusion that it might be excusable, in the event that the game console has more than one controller attached. If not, NOOOOOOOOO! Get it? Just no. We, as a species, have placed people on the moon. The Cell-processor is, as far as I'm concerned, the grestest feat since the Alpha-processor, with a straight lineage to the wheel. It's a marvel. A testimony to human ingenuity. Yet, there it is, all nicely tucked into a sleek black console in my "study". (That's what my wife calls the room where she puts all of my stuff.) So don't tell me we can't make a videogame that doesn't require me to tell it that I want to play. It's on. That means I want to play it.
Well, so I've accepted the Press Start.. For now. So now what? Well, now comes, if you're lucky, the "Please select a storage device". Hm. I only have the one, so I guess I'll choose that one. What would any reasonable intelligent being guess, if pushed? There you go. Gamestudios are entirely staffed by an alien race, come to this planet in order to subdue us all into a mindless dance of pressing buttons, for no apparent reason. They, meanwhile, will probably ravage the women we ignore while in front of our consoles. Meh.. The game, by the way, needs to know which storage device to use every time it is started..
"Please select storage device" is only acceptable if there is more than one storage device! And only, only the first time the game is started. How hard can this be??
Well, that's three (or many). Time to play! Nope. First, they feel the need to inform you that this particular game has a cutting edge feature. One feature so new, so inventive, so revolutionary, that reminding you of it every time you start the game is entirely justified. Nay, required, even. Nevermind that you've logged in the better part of your toddlers life playing the game, nevermind that you've started the game far more times than you've called your mother in your entire life. No, the task they perform, and what you need to acknowledge with a keypress, is that of saving your progress. And it is of vital importance that you do not, I repeat not, under any circumstance, within the timespan of 2 ms take a dive towards your gameconsole and yank the out powercable. Good to know.
Then theres the Main Menu. Dear Lord.. I don't even know where to begin with that one. I've started games on my console literally thousands of times. I do not own thousands of games. That leads to the inevitable conclusion, again if you are a reasonable human being, that I continue where I left off far more times than I start a new game. In short, the number of keypresses from I start the console with a gamedisk in it untill I'm exploding slugs with a flamethrower should be Nil. If you insist, I can settle for one. "Do you want to continue where you left off [Yes][No]". That would be sensible. That would make me happy.
There's more keypresses. Sooo many more. But I think I've made my point. Superflous keypresses are bad.
Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Games. Show all posts
Monday, September 28, 2009
Videogames, and how they annoy me!
Given the previous topics on the blog, it should come as no surprise that I own videogame consoles. Several, in fact. Xbox360, a PS3, and even a PSP. I don't have any games for that one, I simply like the fact that it will, if I should feel so inclined, allow me connect it to the PS3 and play wichever game is running on the PS3, on the PSP. I can not for the life of me see how that could ever be even remotely practial, but I do like the geek-factor. Yes, I suppose I am a geek.
What is perhaps a bit more surpising, given my apparent interests, is that I am married. To a woman. Who's not a geek. I am married to a real, live, non-geeky woman, who cares about non-geeky stuff. Such as what colour things are. If I should phone home one day with news of a recent purchase of, say, a car, her first response would be "oh, god..". This would be muttered. I would not, at this time, offer up more information, as "oh god" is not a question, and the muttering does not invite to share my excitement about said purchase. So there would, very likely, be Awkward Silence. The very next response would in all likelyhood be "what colour is it?"
I think this is a key difference between men and women, the properties of objects which they care about. (This, and the ability to laugh at Monty Python. Ofcourse, I am stereotyping here, but I am allowed to. It's my blog, and the Internets are well suited for this sort of thing. ) Now, speaking for myself, I would not inquire about the colour of anything unless this information would be of importance in actually locating this thing. I would, for instance, ask about the colour of my wifes new car if I had never seen it before, and was looking for it. Me, and most men I know, would rather inquire about things like horsepower, the number of doors, engine size and fuel, properties which concern the utility of whichever object is in question. Women seem to favour estethics. Nothing wrong with that, I like things that look good, but I can't help feeling that any object you bring into your existence should serve some purpose.
This also extends to the topic of the post, videogames. I don't know where to begin.. Most videogames annoy me to an extent hardly experienced by mankind before. The level of annoyance in Stalin when Hitler crossed the border into mother Russia, for instance, would be relatively minor in comparison. I quite often ask myself what these people are thinking of. So I think I shall start a list, right here, of Stupid Stuff to do in videogames. Lets start with cutscenes.
Cutscenes, for the uninitiated, are the short movieclips between gameplay. Some times they are there to convey information of importance to the gameplay, but most of the time it's there, as far as I can work out, for two reasons: 1) To show off how good they are at making things look exciting, and (far worse) 2) to fill up the time with nonsens so they can say "20 hours of gameplay", when there is in fact 2 hours of gameplay and 18 hours of mindless drivel.
I have in my flat the following devices which will let me watch moving pictures: 4 laptops. 1 PS3. 1 Xbox360. 1 PSP. 2 TV's. 1 DVDplayer. 1 PVR. Any one of these devices will show me movies and TV 24/7. So why, my dear game-studio exec, do you think I purchase a $60 game? To watch movies? The answer, as the more perceptive of you may suspect, is no.
Are all gamestudio exec's failed Hollywood directors? Are they like the security-guards on the subway, who failed to get in to police academy or the army, and now has to settle for some low-end job? Are they constantly thinking about that fantastic movie-deal they'll get, just as soon as they're discovered, by someone who buys videogames to watch movies?
Cut-scenes annoy me. The only thing that annoys me more than cut-scenes, are cut-scenes that can not be skipped! Yes, they do this. They make you watch stuff you do not really care about. There is no fast-forward, because they've gone to the trouble of making this, and you're going to watch it, dammit!
There really is no excuse for "non-skippable cutscenes". I am playing a game. You may think the game is so subtle that there's no WAY anyone could play it without the crucial information conveyed in the cutscenes. You'd be wrong. 99% of the time, it's like this: if it moves, shoot it. End of story. If there really is important information to be conveyed, there are other ways to accomplish that besides forcing me to watch it played out on screen. Text springs to mind. Text has worked for millennia. I predict a bright future for it.
What is perhaps a bit more surpising, given my apparent interests, is that I am married. To a woman. Who's not a geek. I am married to a real, live, non-geeky woman, who cares about non-geeky stuff. Such as what colour things are. If I should phone home one day with news of a recent purchase of, say, a car, her first response would be "oh, god..". This would be muttered. I would not, at this time, offer up more information, as "oh god" is not a question, and the muttering does not invite to share my excitement about said purchase. So there would, very likely, be Awkward Silence. The very next response would in all likelyhood be "what colour is it?"
I think this is a key difference between men and women, the properties of objects which they care about. (This, and the ability to laugh at Monty Python. Ofcourse, I am stereotyping here, but I am allowed to. It's my blog, and the Internets are well suited for this sort of thing. ) Now, speaking for myself, I would not inquire about the colour of anything unless this information would be of importance in actually locating this thing. I would, for instance, ask about the colour of my wifes new car if I had never seen it before, and was looking for it. Me, and most men I know, would rather inquire about things like horsepower, the number of doors, engine size and fuel, properties which concern the utility of whichever object is in question. Women seem to favour estethics. Nothing wrong with that, I like things that look good, but I can't help feeling that any object you bring into your existence should serve some purpose.
This also extends to the topic of the post, videogames. I don't know where to begin.. Most videogames annoy me to an extent hardly experienced by mankind before. The level of annoyance in Stalin when Hitler crossed the border into mother Russia, for instance, would be relatively minor in comparison. I quite often ask myself what these people are thinking of. So I think I shall start a list, right here, of Stupid Stuff to do in videogames. Lets start with cutscenes.
Cutscenes, for the uninitiated, are the short movieclips between gameplay. Some times they are there to convey information of importance to the gameplay, but most of the time it's there, as far as I can work out, for two reasons: 1) To show off how good they are at making things look exciting, and (far worse) 2) to fill up the time with nonsens so they can say "20 hours of gameplay", when there is in fact 2 hours of gameplay and 18 hours of mindless drivel.
I have in my flat the following devices which will let me watch moving pictures: 4 laptops. 1 PS3. 1 Xbox360. 1 PSP. 2 TV's. 1 DVDplayer. 1 PVR. Any one of these devices will show me movies and TV 24/7. So why, my dear game-studio exec, do you think I purchase a $60 game? To watch movies? The answer, as the more perceptive of you may suspect, is no.
Are all gamestudio exec's failed Hollywood directors? Are they like the security-guards on the subway, who failed to get in to police academy or the army, and now has to settle for some low-end job? Are they constantly thinking about that fantastic movie-deal they'll get, just as soon as they're discovered, by someone who buys videogames to watch movies?
Cut-scenes annoy me. The only thing that annoys me more than cut-scenes, are cut-scenes that can not be skipped! Yes, they do this. They make you watch stuff you do not really care about. There is no fast-forward, because they've gone to the trouble of making this, and you're going to watch it, dammit!
There really is no excuse for "non-skippable cutscenes". I am playing a game. You may think the game is so subtle that there's no WAY anyone could play it without the crucial information conveyed in the cutscenes. You'd be wrong. 99% of the time, it's like this: if it moves, shoot it. End of story. If there really is important information to be conveyed, there are other ways to accomplish that besides forcing me to watch it played out on screen. Text springs to mind. Text has worked for millennia. I predict a bright future for it.
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