Favorite Things about Video Games

[scotland]

Most - Beating an RPG with ludricrusly overpowered heroes with nothing else to do.

Yep. I always do this as well. Grinding way past the point necessary keeps me going sometimes.
Pretty much any rpg I'll find out the best way to max out stats and then get to work asap. Some of my favorite completions include all max chrono trigger, earthbound, Baldur's gate, ff7 characters. Using the item glitch in ff7 was probably my favorite to max out all stats.

I'm playing "Secret of Mana" right now. It seems like this will be an easy one to do this in. My characters seem to be leveling up something (their weapons, weapons skills, and levels) every time I walk more than three or four screens.

My brothers - that's so funny we all do this. A corollary too overpowered heroes is their ridiculous amounts of loot and money. In some games this band of heroes has enough wealth to just buy off the villain instead of fighting it.

It would be fun to have a game where after your heroes have their victory, they could reset the quest for the next generation. You could go about the land, reseeding the weapons and armor and other artifacts, or even reseeding the dangers (now where do I find a red dragon egg?) for the future. As the unwinding goes, the heroes still have the stats and spells (or maybe those could diminish too) but no longer have the tools, and may face some unexpected challenges in trying to reset the quest.

[scotland]

Most Favorite - A random weapon placed in a rogue-like several levels before it would ever normally be encountered. For one of the few times in a rogue-like, the tables are turned and the monsters need to look out for you.

Least Favorite - Controls that never sync for you. That game where you really want the Y-Axis inverted, but its not an option, or a game like Luigi's Mansion with overly complicated controls.

[JustLikeHeaven]

Favorite Things

LOCAL CO-OP - Nothing tops sitting down with your brother or friend and playing a game. Whether you're trying to finish a single player game by passing the controller back and forth or competing head to head...nothing beats experiencing a game with a buddy.

Escape - The absolute best thing about videogames is their ability to let you escape to playable worlds. Whether you're whisked away to fantasy world of Hyrule, the creepy town of Silent Hill, or the lush Green Hills of Sonic the Hedgehog they all allow you to escape the doldrums of life.

Overcoming a challenge - Unlike other forms of entertainment there is a skill level involved with videogames that offers a satisfying level of accomplishment. Sometimes you're stuck on a particularly brutal set of jumps in a platformer or maybe you're up against a boss that seems insurmountable. When you finally overcome that obstacle it feels great. In older games it was what kept you going. In newer games it a little less frequent.

Hi-Scores - I truly miss old style arcade games where the main objective was to earn the highest score possible. There is something about trying to top your personal best that is highly addicting. This style of game has a made a slight comeback in recent years and I hope we see more of it.

Non realistic/absurd games - I live for games like Earth Defense Force, Diablo III, The Legend of Zelda, and more. I want games that emphasize the strengths of the medium and veer as far away from realism as possible. It again comes down to the escapism aspect of vidoegames. Besides, when a game tries to hard to be realistic it tends to be, um, not fun.

Least Favorite

Over used voice acting - I've gone on about this before, but if there is one thing worse than a overlong cutscene it's a NPC that won't SHUT UP. In most modern games every tertiary character has lines of spoken drivel spewing out of their mouths. I miss the days where everyone was silent and you had to read what they said. It gave videogames a feeling of being an interactive book...especially with JRPGS.

Online play - I've done my fair share of online gaming over the years and I've come to the conclusion that I simply don't care for it. It's fine if you're playing with a friend that you know. Playing with strangers is not enjoyable for me.

Lack of instruction manuals - I hate how modern games have no instructions. It feels cheap. You're paying $60 for a product and it should feel like you're getting your money's worth. Companies that take the extra effort to go all out on their packaging always get extra love from me.

Lengthy tutorials/slow starts - When I play a game I want instant action. There is nothing worse than sitting through an hour of updates/installs to only find that the first 45 minutes is a slow, pooring done movie, with idiotic hand holding tutorials. How that has become the norm is something I will never figure out. To me it's HORRIBLE game design.

Bugs! - More than ever games are glitchy, unstable and require patching. I get that games are bigger and more complex than ever before, but releasing a buggy game is never acceptable. There is nothing worse than reading an online review that states, "After the day one patch the game improved significantly!" Maybe if they spent less time writing/recording crappy dialouge for NPCS they'd have enough time/budget to properly code their game.

That's all I've got for now!

[ActRaiser]

Least Favorite
How about games that require a tutorial before you start as the controls are so complicated, you run out of time, set the game aside, come back later, and forget everything that was in the tutorial?

You make it past the tutorial and then set the game aside for a few weeks or months and then come back. At that point I can't remember the controls at all and there's no way to "re-do" the tutorial. Would it kill the developers to include a way to repeat the tutorial and/or simplify the controls so you don't actually need one to begin with, or heaven forbid, include the instructions either in the game or better yet in a manual?

[VideoGameCritic]

Great feedback so far guys.
The only problem is, these ideas are bleeding into ANOTHER feature I am working on... Video Game RANTS.
Oh well, you guys are just giving me ammo for both! Keep it coming.

[Atarifever]

Lack of instruction manuals - I hate how modern games have no instructions. It feels cheap. You're paying $60 for a product and it should feel like you're getting your money's worth. Companies that take the extra effort to go all out on their packaging always get extra love from me.

Lengthy tutorials/slow starts - When I play a game I want instant action. There is nothing worse than sitting through an hour of updates/installs to only find that the first 45 minutes is a slow, pooring done movie, with idiotic hand holding tutorials. How that has become the norm is something I will never figure out. To me it's HORRIBLE game design.

Least Favorite
How about games that require a tutorial before you start as the controls are so complicated, you run out of time, set the game aside, come back later, and forget everything that was in the tutorial?

You make it past the tutorial and then set the game aside for a few weeks or months and then come back. At that point I can't remember the controls at all and there's no way to "re-do" the tutorial. Would it kill the developers to include a way to repeat the tutorial and/or simplify the controls so you don't actually need one to begin with, or heaven forbid, include the instructions either in the game or better yet in a manual?

Both of you have hit on the same thing, I think. Since the manuals have come out, over-long tutorials have replaced them. I think the problems are one and the same. If we still had manuals, and expected people to read them, wouldn't we be able to let people choose to skip the tutorials? Would it really be so bad to have a good breakdown of the controls, story, powers, etc listed in a nice big manual, and then expect people to figure the intricacies out by playing? Is it really better to do these 30 minute tutorials, where some guy every time tries to explain to you how to freaking look up?

The worst is how they try to work it into the story when they think they're being clever. "Hey, your suit is a little battered. Let's try to calibrate it. Tilt the stick back to look up. Try it now." No. How about we don't do that now. How about I never do that again, and you go shove your 're-calibration exercise' up your Y axis.

[BanjoPickles]

Favorite Things

-Fair difficulty! I love games that are brutally challenging without feeling cheap (The Souls series)
-well-paced checkpoints in 8/16-bit games.
-the soothing sounds of the amazing SNES sound chip!
-water-cooler moments (Master-D's head explosion, hamster in the microwave, dog crashing through the window).
-Sony's killer flash sales
-the allure of a really good "bad" game from the 8-bit era

Least favorite things

-yearly sequels.
-Nintendo's mostly lame attempt at game sales on the Eshop
-overreliance on QTE's
-the annoying trend of saying that such and such game is the worst ever because James Rolfe said so. Yes, Action 52 is awful, but there are far worse games! If anybody says "ET is the worst game ever made....."I seriously have to question their knowledge of gaming.
-

[Retrology]

-Shortcuts in racing games
-Constantly changing scenery and diverse level layouts
-Platform action that tests patience while not being tedious
-Puzzle solving in RPGs/Action Adventures
-Branching paths in shooting games
-Secret areas you can explore by finding a second time
-Alternate Routes in racing games
-Grabbing a continue

[Retrology]

Least favorite:

Downgrading weapons
Games that erase all of your 1Ups you collected
Cartridges that crash
RPGs where it takes way too long to get to a certain destination
3D games where everything is designed like a maze

[Atarifever]

Favorite Things
-Sony's killer flash sales


Least favorite things
-Nintendo's mostly lame attempt at game sales on the Eshop

Perhaps a minor gripe, but one I completely agree with. Sony recently had a flash sale where I got Resogun for $3 Canadian. That's a good game. Earlier this year I believe I got FF8 for $2. Nintendo does a "flash sale" and it's like "Wow, normally $59.99 and on for only $48.50! Whoopie! All my Christmases are come at once!"

I kid you not, there was once a third party game in a Nintendo "flash sale" that was marked down by something like $1.10, from an original price of $50 or something. The graphic that shows the discount said something like 1.47% off! It's embarrassing. Yes, deep discounts can't be offered on everything, but surely the Virtual Console stuff can start to get significantly discounted at the least.