1. 12 Things Games Must Stop Doing
Right Now
http://www.gamebasin.com/news/12-things-games-must-stop-doing-right-now
Video games have come a long way in the last few decades but it’s only recently that we are finally
seeing realism and not just graphically but also in terms of physics, AI and aurally too. What we
thought was ultra‐realistic five years ago simply wasn’t but now you can’t but help look at some
games and think “That… That looks bloody real!”. Video games offer more deeper content, vivid
visuals and higher quality gameplay than ever before. So it’s with a heavy blackened heart that I
must say that game devs need to stop putting certain trash sections into their otherwise great
games. It’s unnecessary and it takes us back to the older days of gaming and away from today’s
expected excellence. You know the kind of thing I’m talking about; strange out of place quirky
puzzles or sections that have no earthly reason to exist and spoil the game almost beyond
redemption. That bloody terrible asteroids mini‐game in Dead Space springs to mind. Now please
be warned, I’m going to pick on popular games such as Assassin’s Creed, Watch Dogs and Max
Payne and there’s a fair bit of ranting herein – but if we don’t get this out in the open and off our
collective chests how will the devs know what we like and what we dislike? So let’s begin with…
12. Drawn Out Dull Cut Scenes

2. The original Donkey Kong arcade cab is guilty for the phenomena of cut scenes as it’s generally
accepted that it had the first ones ever found in a video game. From the beginning where DK
kidnaps Lady/Pauline and climbs up the ladders and trashes the place, down to his ultimate demise
landing on his monkey head all delivered with a well‐deserved thud. That’s not to say that these
short vignettes weren’t awesome: they played a nice little ditty, displayed a graphic reward and
gave you a chance for a breather and to step away from the machine to check if any duly impressed
ladies were watching. They weren’t. But the concept of cute cut scenes was now in place and the
world was better for it. Wait a minute… And so after thirty years of games utilizing cut scenes to
offer the player a break and also to tell a story we arrive at Max Payne 3, a trite, expensive B movie
that had a tiny amount of interactivity weaved into its dull narrative. Max Payne 3 was insanely
expensive to produce and yet despite all that money being thrown at it, the fact is you’re watching
a sequence of unchangeable preset movie clips that are sporadically interrupted by a soupçon of
short, poorly designed shooting segments. That’s like watching a DVD and playing a game of Candy
Crush on your phone every once in a while. This is the future of gaming? Rockstar, the makers of
Max Payne 3, also made LA Noire which had extremely impressive graphics thanks to ground‐breaking
advance motion capture of actors’ faces. And it was all rendered in real time which is
quite an achievement – yet it’s nothing more than fancy cut scenes. The game consists of driving
to a location, looking for clues then asking suspects a series of basic questions in what is patently
a very simple game mechanic. There wasn’t the ability to change the progression of the clip being
played out; you couldn’t control the action once you had selected your response to the situation.
You couldn’t interrupt the dialog to slap the person you were questioning, nor could you alter the
delivered attitude and tone or change anything until each short clip had finished. Despite spending
millions on the tech to make the most realistic 3D rendered human emotions in a video game to
date, there really wasn’t any interactivity beyond selecting from three or so options. The devs could
have just filmed the actors for real on a period studio set or using chromakey and saved all that
coding and mocap data. Had LA Noire been released twenty years ago as an FMV game it would
play exactly the same on a Phillips CDi system. When you have more cut scenes than gameplay you
have a problem.

3. 11. Drawn Out Dull Cut Scenes II
Wait, didn’t you just do this one? In fact, now that I think of it I like some cut scenes especially
when they add to the storyline and look great. You don’t know what you’re talking about… Yes, but
let’s add a new twist; UNSKIPPABLE cut scenes; so dire and hated it was necessary to invent a new
word. So if you were one of those who previously thought you liked cut scenes let me ask you this:
do you still like them when you have no choice but to watch them over and over again? Be it when
you’re running through the game a second time or when you’ve died and have to sit through that
quirky cinematic for the tenth time? The first Assassin’s Creed had a completely ridiculous
unskippable section at the beginning of the game – you are stuck in a small library/church area and
have to listen to several lengthy tedious speeches that weren’t interesting the first time you heard
them and boy they were cruddy by the twentieth time. All you can do is take a few steps left or
right and wait for it to end. I would mash random controller buttons just on the off‐chance it would
skip ahead and I could get my medieval parkour fix on the go. It never worked. Although the cut
scenes varied depending on which memory sequence you were on, they were still forced on you
every time you put the game in the console and I heard them so many times I could recite them
word for word. Dirt 3 had unskippable tutorial scenes filled with witty banter and radio DJ style
rambling. It added nothing and yet happened before every event. Every one! It’s a racing game:
you press the right trigger to go forward and use the thumbstick to turn. I don’t need 99.8 Kitsch
FM’s “Whacky Jarvis” and the Bubble Fart Crew to introduce each race. Neither do you.
10. Point Of View That Changes For No Reason

4. First person or third person – what’s your pleasure? Some games fair better in third person and
wouldn’t work any other way such as the aforementioned Assassin’s Creed as you need to see the
next hand hold or quickly scout for those leaps of faith. Plus you get to see that gorgeous fluid
animation on the main character and his fabulous flowing duds. Other games however go for full
immersion and use first person – games like Doom, the Far Cry series and of course every generic
FPS shooter out there. The game genre and content therefore dictates the required POV and there’s
not much more to it than that. Wait a minute… It’s not that one is better than the other, it’s when
the developers choose to switch mid‐game for no logical reason at all. Assassin’s Creed, an example
I gave two seconds ago for being better in third person, is guilty of this – specifically in the franchise‐saving
AC IV. When you leave the Animus you’re suddenly thrown from third person perspective
into first person at the Abstergo facility. Why? To separate the reality from the memory? No other
AC did this when you left the Animus. There’s nothing to gain from this POV change. It just happens.
But hey, let’s not pile on AC, let’s call out Splinter Cell: Blacklist, a game steeped in third person
history yet for one brief inexplicable moment the game switches to first person. Skill sets such as
takedowns are executed the same but apparently Briggs, the character you briefly play in first
person perspective, is wearing an Oculous Rift whereas poor old third person Sam Fisher has to
make do with a nearby floating Lakitu.
9. Driving Simulations That Hate Freedom

5. Racing games are insanely realistic now – the car handling, the physics, the vehicle models and the
telementry data are all amazing. So many millions of calculations per second to bring you the best
racing experience ever. Wait a minute… It’s a racing sim right? So let me go the wrong way around
on the track; it’s literally the first thing I want to do in a racing game. I like to see how the game AI
handles a madman kamikazing his way backwards. Sometimes I park sideways on the crest of a hill
and watch the AI cars trying to avoid me. Were they aware of me before they could see me? Just
how well programmed is the game? And of course hopefully I’d like to see a massive pile‐up that
would make the Blues Brothers proud. But so many newer racing games prevent this either by
flashing an obnoxious ‘Wrong Way’ warning message in red across the screen or worse the game
magically picks up your car and plonks you back down facing the right way. That’s not realism, it’s
a severe restriction on gameplay deliberately coded by the devs and one I can only attribute to
their game engine not handling nutters like me driving all over the shop. Not only do I like to go in
reverse though, I want to go anywhere – through barriers, across gravel, wrong way down the pit
lane. Anywhere. I don’t expect to win this way but I do expect the game to allow it and handle it
appropriately. Years ago there was an Amiga game called Indianapolis 500: The Simulation and it
let you do just that; meaning pretty much anything you want and I had more fun crashing into
oncoming cars then I ever did racing. As a footnote that game is now twenty five years old – look
how far we’ve come graphically but how backwards we are in terms of simulation. More recently
the original Xbox title Rallysport Challenge 2 also allowed for near unlimited freedom even letting
you roll down cliffs if your car could make it. It made the game much more real regardless of how
proper you chose to drive. If game makers get any more rigid with their racing games I think the
word simulation can be dropped and replaced with limitation. Speaking of limits…
8. Rubber Banding Opponents

6. Driving games basically challenge the player to challenge themselves. Beat your own best time
whilst avoiding skilled AI rivals. It must be difficult to balance various levels of player ability when
creating a racing sim so that it’s fun and fair for the gamer regardless of their skill level, I mean in
reality a computer controlled car should beat any human player every time. Wait a minute… It’s
true that on a level playing field a computer should beat a human – reaction time would be one
hundred percent and the perfect racing line nailed at every turn. So coders should apply
manufacturered foibles, quirks and margins of error to keep the game challenging but not so good
that the human player has no chance. Do they do that? No, they allow you to get ahead in the race
then simply strap a virtual rubber band tethered to both your car and the cars behind you. If you
have moments of brilliance or manage to sideswipe the computer opponent off the road the band
stretches to a point then flings the AI car right behind you. Many, many racing games do this and
it’s infuriatingly annoying and totally unrealistic. I’ve pit‐maneuvered a computer controlled car off
the road just before the end of a race only to have it pass me one second later to win – like it was
catapulted past me. And it’s not just racing sims who do this. Both Watch Dogs and the GTA
franchise is guilty as I’m sure many other free roam/driving combo games are. There are videos on
YouTube of Watch Dogs’ cars blatantly doing it. Have you ever played a mission in GTA where you
know for a fact it’s impossible to catch the car that you’re chasing until you reach a certain location?
The rubber band in that case is acting in reverse almost like two magnets of the same polarity near
each other. I’ve slowed down in those instances and guess what… the computer car slows down
too! Utterly ridiculous and makes a mockery of the idea that part of the game is interactive. You’re
effectively controlling the playback speed of a cut scene, not driving a car in a dramatic chase
sequence. Rubber banding is a shoddy short cut and developers should realize that players can see
it when it’s used as we’re not nearly as stupid as the lazy code that causes it.
7. Possessed Cameras That Need An Exorcism

7. There’s a lot going on and so the camera might intelligently zoom out to reveal the action from
further out or pan around so you can see a bad guy coming from behind. It adds a dramatic movie
feel to the proceedings and heightens the tension. Wait a minute… No it doesn’t, it just messes me
up and I die. When a game randomly takes over the camera, instead of getting some useful angle I
seem to invariably end up fighting with the bloody thing in a failed attempt to regain control. It’s
often difficult enough playing a game normally but apparently I really need to see my character
from two miles away. And let’s flip the controls while we’re at it for added frustration. It’s always
fun to walk through a door or archway only to have my character immediately turn around and go
back the way he came. So‐called spooky thriller Alan Wake had this thing where every time a
zombie would be about to pounce on you the camera would wildly swing around to reveal his
location. This rapid change in view point did the opposite of its intended purpose, wiping any
tension away because once the camera was out of my control I knew there was trouble ahead.
When it happened (and it did it every time a nearby bad guy pounced) I desperately tried to get
the camera back to me so I could shoot the bugger. Often it was more the camera’s motion that
caused my death not the gameplay. The terribly disappointing Watch Dogs had slightly different
camera angle nonsense going on – specifically when you drove a car. Instead of showing the
viewpoint from behind the vehicle like normal, it would just sometimes decide to not rotate the
camera resulting in you seeing the car from the side as you turned a corner or even heading
towards you if you went around a tight bend. So I have fifteen crazy police cars after me, some bad
guys in trucks and the game chooses at that moment to perpetually point the camera north
regardless of my car’s orientation. It felt like I was driving an RC vehicle and no matter how much I
grappled with the camera it just ended up with my car smacking into a brick wall that I didn’t see
in time.
6. Escorting And Protecting NPCs

8. There comes a point in a lot of games where the story winds up with you finding a friend in trouble
and you must do your best to help you both survive. It’s you and your injured pal versus impossible
odds. Will you both live to tell your virtual grand kids about the epic showdown you’re about to
partake in? Wait a minute… There’s nothing more aggravating than being engrossed in a great
single player game only to suddenly find yourself babysitting a piss‐poor NPC severely lacking any
intelligence, artificial or otherwise. Your ability to finish the mission depends on how well
programmed he is as his death instantly fails the level and prevents any further progress. And it’s
always one of about three tired situations – for example your buddy is hurt so you must throw him
over your shoulder and carry him to safety but this slows you down to a walk and of course prevents
you from using your weapons. Or perhaps your daft mate is opening a locked door or downloading
some data and you must protect them from the enemy onslaught for a period of time while he
gets the job done. Oh, here’s another; you have to cover him from a rooftop with a sniper rifle as
he runs below on the ground. Whatever it is, it’s often his behaviour not yours that results in level
failure. To sweeten the deal the NPC should have very limited health and talk constantly with a
really annoying voice so when he or she dies and the mission is aborted you get to listen to the
same trite dialog multiple times when you restart. Remember the Max Payne 2 chapter “Dearest
of all my friends” where you have to protect Vinnie in the baseball bat boy costume? Ugh. So, so
bad.
5. Installing. Loading.

9. Games are massive – massive in scope, in cost to produce and massive in terms of graphic and
sonic assets. High definition bitmaps that craft the visual world you’re about to throw yourself into
comes in at gigabytes and that kind of data takes some time to get loaded into memory. Wait a
minute… Yes it does take time and simply put I don’t care. It’s not my problem and I won’t take it
any more. Deliver the game on a cheap flash drive, a custom made SSD or via magic but I won’t
put up with “Loading, don’t turn off your console”. We didn’t have that with the SNES or Mega
Drive – you popped in the cart and three seconds after the famous “Say Ga” logo you were happily
drowning Sonic the Hedgehog to upset your younger brother. Watch Dogs comes on two discs on
the Xbox 360 and if you use the Xbox dashboard to install the game it will then laugh at you and
install itself again from the game’s menu, thus installing itself twice. This process takes around
twenty to thirty minutes and that’s just installing it. The game then poohs on you from a great
height by taking forever to load every time you want to play it. Should you die or fail a mission then
enjoy that lengthy loading screen as you’ll be seeing it a lot. There’s no excuse for installations that
take half an hour or loading screens that stay on screen for longer than a few seconds. As games
get bigger and more complex this problem is only going to get worse and I have yet to see a single
new technology or proposed system that addresses the issue.
4. Inexplicable Invisible Barriers

10. Games have to have limits to the space that you can explore (well with the exception of Minecraft)
and a common method is having the game’s playable arena surrounded by sea. Seems fair enough.
Wait a minute… Actually an ocean I can understand and for me it’s a rational mechanic to keep a
player in a certain area, as are locked doors and walls clearly too high to climb – but three foot high
impenetrable bushes and invisible barriers I will not have. Why do game developers feel this is
acceptable? They pile office desks, sofas and trash cans on stairways as a way of indicating that you
can’t go that way but I’m some tough grunt with full Army training I’m sure I can move a couple of
chairs and some suitcases to further explorer the upper levels. Even if there’s nothing up there of
interest just let me do it. Game developers have been restricting player movement into mandatory
set paths for so long now it spawned a name – corridor shooter. You literally are been forced down
well‐rendered corridors and any attempt to leave the preset path will be met with failure. Why not
just have us play on rails shooting from there, oh wait that’s also the name for a certain type of
game. Game developers need to open their programming horizons so us as players can have
gameplay horizons opened too. Buildings should be procedurally generated to allow for incredible
exploration and freedom. I want to enjoy the whole fairground not be tied to the ghost train. No
more stacked up furniture, no more glass walls and no more restrictions.
3. Quick Time Events

11. Sometimes it’s fun to engage the player by having them interact with an intense cut scene. Flash a
button or two on screen and if timed correctly the scene continues and the gamer doesn’t feel like
it’s a passive moment in the game. Wait a minute… You’re telling me that I now have to actually
play the cut scene that I so very much detest – and play it using a Simon Says methodology so old
it existed before video games? At least with a standard cut scene I can leave the room to grab a
pint. What are you thinking erstwhile game developers? QTEs are a terrible blight on gaming and
an insult to the gamer. I don’t think I’ve ever read that QTEs were fun – not in a review and not
from fellow gamers. So who is enjoying them so much that they’re becoming commonplace even
in games where we know they’re not wanted? Halo 4 had them – it started with a series of QTEs
as Master chief is climbing a ladder. Halo franchise head honcho and old colleague of mine Frank
O Connor justified this by saying it was to teach you how to play the game and to introduce you to
new game mechanics. Well after the first few QTE moments they hardly appear again and they
teach you nothing. Why were they there? I’ll tell you why, because some game developers secretly
yearn to make motion pictures not video games and so add unnecessary “movie” elements to great
games as long as it means they get to pretend to be a film director for a little bit. I was no more
convinced of the original explanation given by O Connor than I was of his new American accent.
You’re Scottish, Frank – be proud of it. Just don’t be proud of those QTEs in Halo.
2. Knocking Me Out And Taking Away My Weapons

12. Due to a series of blunders your character finds himself without weapons and a lump on his head
the size of a little person’s kneecap. This is a dire situation and our hero needs to track down the
cache of confiscated guns so he can royally mess up his enemies. Wait a minute… Stop rendering
me unconscious and taking my weapons! Why do games do this? Half Life, Call of Duty, Dishonored,
AVP and so many more are guilty parties. I spent a lot of time amassing that collection of guns,
crowbars and make‐shift explosives and in many cases was carefully upgrading them. Yet because
of the rigid storyline, and not my game playing actions, I find myself without them. I think you get
knocked out in COD BO2 about seven times in the course of the single player campaign. It’s
laughable. It again comes down to the lack of freedom. The written story dictates the action not
your skills and losing your weapons at that point in the game is mandatory. It’s done so often it’s a
cliche – an unimaginative mechanic to force a particular play style for a while. Like to go in guns‐blazing
and not stealth? Tough toodles, you have no weaponry now so you have to play our way.
That shotgun was getting a bit too powerful so I’m taking it away. Conserving ammo for the next
level were you? What a waste of time – I’ll just relieve you of all that brass. Some games try to
explain your gunless situation in ways that at least make sense – if you’ve been arrested then I
could totally understand having your weapons removed as seen in GTA. But all too often a game
will just snatch them off you without any attempt at a valid explanation – in Alan Wake you gain a
great lantern needed to stave off the Mogwai zombies and you also find a fairly good weapon – yet
when you climb into a helicopter and jump out at your destination you’re back to a piddly mini
Maglite and spud gun. There is zero reason given for this and it happens several times in the game.
Arsenal thievery happens in many other big name popular games and for me it’s such a predictable
trope it can ruin any enjoyment gleaned up to that point.
1. Boss Battles

13. Quite often everything will culminate in an amazing grand battle against a giant enemy who up
until now has been taunting you from the sidelines. The showdown is on and it’s time to rid the
world of this annoying terror once and for all. Wait a minute… I detest end of level boss battles. I
know that’s not necessarily the way all gamers feel and several full games are basically little more
than a series of boss battles so I guess folks must like them. To me they just interrupt the action
and I’m often held hostage until I can beat it which in some cases is never. The problem is often
one of two issues. One – the boss battle has nothing to do with the fighting methods that you have
been using up to that point and instead utilises gameplay unique to the boss. Or two – your
character is radically unprepared to face the overpowering foe due to decisions that you made
prior to that point. Sometimes it’s a combination of both. As an example of the first type, many of
the last fights in the Assassin’s Creed series begin by inexplicably taking away all your weapons
(sound familiar?) and also blocking your level ten assassin buddies. So instead of defeating the big
bad guys using awesome ninja moves you zap them with the ‘apple’ – a glorified ray gun. All of this
is totally out keeping with the rest of play and to add to the frustration there’s various tight time
limits and you can’t even heal yourself with potions. None of this happens anywhere else in what
is mostly a free roaming RPG. The most recent Deus Ex brings us to the next issue. DE:HR is a game
that rewards non‐lethal stealth and indeed there are achievements for not killing anyone… except
that is for the awful game‐breaking boss battles. If you’ve spent your limited praxis points on
anything but offensive based upgrades and then suddenly get trapped with the first boss you’re
going to have a bad time. It’s dull blam‐blam‐blam shoot them until they’re dead. No stealth or
puzzles, no using skills you’ve leant as an augmented shadow. It’s almost as if the boss battles were
written by a completely different team from the main game – oh wait, they were. Eidos Montreal
created the bulk of the game but the boss battles were outsourced to Grip Entertainment and
helmed by a guy who was unfamiliar with the Deus Ex franchise. Sweet. As for boss fights with
QTEs? Just kill me now. For those of us who hate them, and I can’t be alone, end of level boss fights
should be made skippable or just replace the boss battle with a nice cut scene instead… And yes I
can’t believe I just wrote that last sentence.
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