Good ideas gone bad
Creating new ideas for a game can help set it apart from the what's available at the time - so it's a sad moment to see a good idea with great potential, only to be bogged down due to lack of time spent refining and polishing, or the rest of the game is simply too much of a mess to compensate for it. Games like alpha protocol and fracture had great concepts in mind, but were covered too deep with other issues to make them critical and commercially successful. There are also cases like Spore: the idea is great, but the gameplay wasn't thought out properly and ended up feeling more hollow than it could have been. Innovation can be fantastic - However, it must be fully fleshed out if a new idea is brought to life.
Lackluster Beginning/End
Although the entire package is naturally going to need quality across the board, the beginning and end can make or break the experience. Starting with a bad first impression can leave us wondering whether it was worth trying the game at all, and a ho-hum end can leave a last memory that's less than pleasant. Especially for more story-driven titles, it can be pivotal to have a narrative flow that doesn't fall flat at the last moment. Whether it's Fallout 3, Halo 2, or Duke Nukem Forever, how it starts and concludes needs to be watched like a hawk. So there.
Suspension of Disbelief
Keeping the suspension of disbelief can be especially difficult for the Video Game industry: With the most well known games involving barrel-throwing monkeys, skirt-wearing elves, and an alien-killing mute scientist with a love for crowbars, it's hard to have it seem like a believable world. The best that can usually be done is to stay true to the mythology and material, with a relatable and believable cast of characters. When we see plot events that either feel inappropriate to that world, or pull a retcon, it's aggravating to see something play out that shouldn't have happened in the first place. Star Fox Adventures turned a potentially great game(Dinosaur Planet) into a forced sequel. Having Fox McCloud beating up anthropomorphic dinosaurs with a glowing staff felt completely out of the world of star fox. The gameplay and the visuals were fantastic, but it was a title that could've done without moments like andross popping up at the end as the final boss. BioWare has also had cases of titles having potentially non-canonical events taking place, making previous actions in previous titles feel less meaningful. Keeping immersed in vibrant, imaginative worlds can be difficult when something like that happens, and I hope to see it as little as possible in the industry's future.
That one annoying character...
It can be hard to make a seemingly living, breathing entity out of thin air be enchanting at first sight. However, memories of our favorite games were stained with unanimously irritating characters. Yuffie, Navi, Slippy the Frog, The fan from ES IV, and the list literally goes on. Some seem to be an attempt at comedy relief or a helpful friend, but end up just having us pull our hair out instead. Although character development has gotten better, it's still with us to this day. Fox! Help meeee!
Modifié par DominusVita, 09 septembre 2011 - 10:45 .
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