Video game pet peeves.

You're talking about lootboxes specifically in this bit and not more general MTX. I agree on lootboxes being garbage, but that said...

You played GT6 after they added the mtx, didn't you?
I did, most of the games I play have them because they’re inescapable. I’ll still play a series i enjoy when they add MT’s but I’m never happy when they do

Loot boxes are still micro transactions, theyre just a much more deceptive version of them.
 
WipEout Omega Collection is a great example of an otherwise superb racing game almost ruined by the inclusion of weapons and combat. It's like trying to enjoy a good meal while someone is throwing hard objects at the back of your head. Seriously, the handling and circuits could have stood on their own just fine.

I don't get the impulse to add weapons to an otherwise respectable racing game. It sticks out even more in a case like Racing Apex (still coming Soon™, they say on Twitter), where it clashes with the game's inspirations/subgenre; but at least the weapons are said to be 100% optional in that game.
 
WipEout Omega Collection is a great example of an otherwise superb racing game almost ruined by the inclusion of weapons and combat. It's like trying to enjoy a good meal while someone is throwing hard objects at the back of your head. Seriously, the handling and circuits could have stood on their own just fine.

I don't get the impulse to add weapons to an otherwise respectable racing game. It sticks out even more in a case like Racing Apex (still coming Soon™, they say on Twitter), where it clashes with the game's inspirations/subgenre; but at least the weapons are said to be 100% optional in that game.
Sometimes they can be welcome, and while 2048 probably did the best overall, I agree. The zone events and straight races show how damn good it is, and the AG feel is almost wholly unique, even if you do include F-Zero, in how it feels.

Blur and Split/Second come to mind as well. They had the potential, but for me Blur quickly became realistic (aka dull) MarioKart, and while Split/Second had the destruction as a core part of it, it never really worked right and eventually hit Michael Bay levels of action apathy.
 
Sometimes they can be welcome, and while 2048 probably did the best overall, I agree. The zone events and straight races show how damn good it is, and the AG feel is almost wholly unique, even if you do include F-Zero, in how it feels.

Blur and Split/Second come to mind as well. They had the potential, but for me Blur quickly became realistic (aka dull) MarioKart, and while Split/Second had the destruction as a core part of it, it never really worked right and eventually hit Michael Bay levels of action apathy.
It feels akin to the FAST games or original F-ZERO, with a more even balance between tight control and anti-gravity driftiness than the latter grippy F-Zeros or the bouncy floatiness I recall from older WipEout games. 👍

I had about the same reaction to Blur and Split/Second. In combining real(-looking) cars with some action, I generally prefer to keep the emphasis on driving skill, like FlatOut and Wreckfest, or police chase gameplay.
 
That time when useful features in the offical website of Saints Row were shut down.

This includes My Steelport, a very exciting feature for SR3 and SR4 because it allows one player to save their characters online so that he/she may download it if the player wants to use them for their new game.

And then it also acts as a storage for in-game screenshots, though it is rather clunky since you'll get an error once in a while, even if you have a freaking good connection to the internet.

The most saddest part is that I didn't receive the news at the time it was announced, that it will be mostly shut down, which inevitably happened. But I guess that's part of life. I used to take shots there of my characters which became a hobby of mine when I was still playing the game.

If Volition releases a new Saints Row game, I hope they'll put the exciting feature back someday.
 
If Volition releases a new Saints Row game, I hope they'll put the exciting feature back someday.

Well, good news on that front I guess. Don't know if that feature will be brought back, but I'm sure they'll find some way to do it.
 
I'm talking about games like NFS Carbon with its random territory takeovers (which are really just a mild annoyance rather than anything serious)
I feel you there. While as far as the career goes, they weren't a big deal since you could easily reclaim the territory later on, but if you're trying to get the reward card for Cross's Corvette by winning 20 defensive races, that's where it can become a problem.

Like for instance, when I have tons of unsaved progress that I need to save, don't have the time to do another race and I get a message saying my territory is under attack, that's where it can get annoying because you can't deny it and then do it afterwards because it won't count towards that 20 you need to get the reward card. Not to mention, you have to either accept or deny it just to get to the save option, which can be a pain if you have a lot of unsaved progress and don't want to miss a single defensive race. Seems like I remember the AI was much more aggressive in these defensive races than most of the games standard AI races, which honestly doesn't help in this situation. (I haven't touched the game in a long time though)

I love NFS Carbon, but I do recall getting annoyed with these inconvenient defensive races at least once.
Juiced with its incredibly annoying respect system where you can (and will) lose a ton of respect by refusing some dude's Pink Slip challenge.
Never played Juiced before, but it does sound like it would be pretty annoying.

I can remember Midnight Club Los Angeles being sort of like this, except if you denied it, they just make a snarky remark and that's it. It was no big deal really. However, I do remember if you quit the game/turn off your console during a pink slip race, you lose your car and I think they did something similar with police pursuits as well. Rockstar apparently knew people would try to get around losing their car by quitting the game/turning off the console and then reentering the race to try again, so my guess is they implemented this to stop people from doing it. Pretty clever thinking on their part. :lol:
I'm annoyed slightly with Enthusia Professional Racing for breaking away from the standard menu controls on a PS2 game. With every other game I played on my PS2; it's been programmed into my mind that Triangle is "go back". However Konami for some reason decided for this game to make it the square button. I know it lists the controls on the menu screen, but I still end up not listening due to my muscle memory.
After revisiting Ridge Racer Type 4, I certainly can understand that. Ridge Racer Type 4 for whatever reason has it where you have to press circle to accept and X to go back which is pretty irregular in my opinion, not just for its time, but even now. Doesn't make sense to me why it had to be this way.

I typically think of the square button as the brake in pretty much any game that involves driving, but the Twisted Metal series is weird about this. They always had that button as the accelerator instead. I'm sure they had a reason for it, but it's still kind of weird to me.

When I was younger I thought it was kind of strange how NFSMW 2005 had you press L1 and R1 to change the color of your decal instead of square like NFSU2. (it doesn't bother me anymore though)
 
Last edited:
Well, good news on that front I guess. Don't know if that feature will be brought back, but I'm sure they'll find some way to do it.
I guess this is it? Damn, I hope they really do a good job of developing it and making it into a very impressive game.

Like GTA V, SRIV is already more than 5 years old already without any true sequel yet. I don't think Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell nor Agents of Mayhem can be considered as its direct successors and I also don't think that it will become similar to GTA in terms of gameplay someday.

That said, it just needs to stay and be what it is; creating your very own characters and having lots of fun while using them in the game.
 
After revisiting Ridge Racer Type 4, I certainly can understand that. Ridge Racer Type 4 for whatever reason has it where you have to press circle to accept and X to go back which is pretty irregular in my opinion, not just for its time, but even now. Doesn't make sense to me why it had to be this way.
It doesn't make sense to me why O and X became standardized the way they are on Playstation systems. The symbols are backwards according to their general meaning, and it is an inversion of the SNES pattern the Playstation inherited -- which is also implied by the placement of O and X -- as well as the typical placement of negative/affirmative buttons in games. Attack/cancel/downshift/brake to the left, jump/talk/upshift/accelerate to the right.

Microsoft's setup is more sensible because they at least conformed the button names and colors to the standard use of A and B (though they inherited the XYBA layout from the Dreamcast and followed the Playstation's lead on controls).
 
It doesn't make sense to me why O and X became standardized the way they are on Playstation systems. The symbols are backwards according to their general meaning, and it is an inversion of the SNES pattern the Playstation inherited -- which is also implied by the placement of O and X -- as well as the typical placement of negative/affirmative buttons in games. Attack/cancel/downshift/brake to the left, jump/talk/upshift/accelerate to the right.
Wow, I never thought of it that way. :dunce: I have to admit I am not sure I fully understand though.

This post got me thinking about how circle became the button to go back on the PS3 and the PS4 and I can't help but wonder why they changed it. I sort of wonder the same thing about how the R2 button became the accelerator in racing games since the PS3. Better throttle control maybe?
 
...I sort of wonder the same thing about how the R2 button became the accelerator in racing games since the PS3. Better throttle control maybe?
That simply conformed to the Gamecube/Dreamcast/Xbox idea of analog triggers and their use for racing games, as I see it. Now Nintendo is the outlier on that after a legal dispute over patent rights for analog triggers -- as I understand, Sony and Microsoft settled with the company while Nintendo refused.

I personally think R2 makes a fine accelerator button for PS2 games in retrospect, since it is just as pressure-sensitive as the X button and more comfortable to use. The DS2's L2 is even kinda preferable over an analog trigger for braking, because its firm operation is more like a firm brake pedal. :)
 
I personally think R2 makes a fine accelerator button for PS2 games in retrospect, since it is just as pressure-sensitive as the X button and more comfortable to use.
I have to agree, while I didn't like it at first since I was used to the X button being the throttle for so many years, it is more comfortable than mashing the X button for a long period of time. Heck, I can remember back when I first got NFS Carbon, I played it so much one day, I had a blister on my thumb from where I had held the X button for so long. Had it been mapped to the R2 button, I doubt that would have happened.

While I am still used to using the X button in racing games, I am slowly getting used to using the R2 button now.
The DS2's L2 is even kinda preferable over an analog trigger for braking, because its firm operation is more like a firm brake pedal.
And that's about what I was thinking earlier, but I wasn't sure how to say it. I imagine part of the reason they switched to the L2 and R2 buttons being the gas and brake was because with the way the DS3 was designed, it vaguely simulates pedals like on a real car. Seems pretty sensible to me.
 
The reason O was the accept button most likely is because in Japan, O is the symbol that is the equivalent to the check, meaning yes.
 
One more, though this one is more a personal thought than overarching.

Where's the fun anymore?

I get that people think this, that, or the other is fun, but even then they throw asterisk into it like a target. PC2 is fun***(if you have a wheel, if you have the right system, and if you can swallow it's BS)! GTS is fun***(if you learn to tune, if you find a good group, if your internet is perfect), Forza, AC, etc., Show me a new-new game, not even just racing, that is widely and easily accepted as good. Even if they are, you have the hyper-toxic fans who act as gatekeepers killing as much of people's enjoyment as they can, for some reason that can't be easily explained or reasoned.

And this is when they're notable, the flip side is the games being battery-acid barf and wallowing in it, Need for Speed and the NASCAR games especially, where any felling I had left has actually been destroyed by what is.
 
The reason O was the accept button most likely is because in Japan, O is the symbol that is the equivalent to the check, meaning yes.
Interestingly, that seems to be coincidental. And that X is also usually associated with the word 'wrong', too. :lol:

images
 
When a game has optional random events that punish you for not taking them.

I'm not talking about games like XCOM where you have to manage your resources carefully in case of such an emergency, I'm talking about games like NFS Carbon with its random territory takeovers (which are really just a mild annoyance rather than anything serious) and Juiced with its incredibly annoying respect system where you can (and will) lose a ton of respect by refusing some dude's Pink Slip challenge.
You know, when I quoted you before, I completely forgot about a childhood game I used to play that was quite infamous for this, Tonka Space Station.

When playing Simulation Mode, after completing a mission, once you get to the menu, out of nowhere you're forced to do this boss mission and it involves destroying a defense satellite on a collision course with your space station. Okay, I don't mind the boss mission itself, in fact, it was kind of fun for me, but what I do have a problem with is even if you succeed, sometimes they will drop your rank after the mission for no apparent reason, which seems horrifically unfair if you ask me. I mean, come on, first you force me to do it our nowhere, I destroy the satellite and save the space station, a far greater act than anything else in the game, and this is the thanks I get for it?! :grumpy:

This is what motivated me to sell the game years ago. Tonka Space Station's ranking system is pretty unfair as it is because when you get to the higher ranks, you could do the same 3 missions 100 times or more and your rank won't go up for a long time. However, if you fail a mission just once, they immediately drop it down and it takes a while to get it back up. That issue I mentioned certainly doesn't help its case.
 
It's personal thing, but have you guys noticed that a lot of racing games nowadays have UI design that looks like Windows 8 start menu?

View attachment 849324 View attachment 849328 View attachment 849323 View attachment 849325 View attachment 849326 View attachment 849329 View attachment 849330 View attachment 849331 View attachment 849327 View attachment 849332

It looks alright and it's functional, but I just feel like we could use a bit more of variety.
GT6 started that trend, I think.
GT6_MYHOME.png
 
It's personal thing, but have you guys noticed that a lot of racing games nowadays have UI design that looks like Windows 8 start menu?

(snip)

It looks alright and it's functional, but I just feel like we could use a bit more of variety.
NFS2015 sort of did as well, although they angled it a bit. I kind of feel the same about it as well. At one point I can remember it had the ability to rate the game on PSN from the main menu and that made it feel sort of like a mobile app to me. :lol:
maxresdefault.jpg
 
It's personal thing, but have you guys noticed that a lot of racing games nowadays have UI design that looks like Windows 8 start menu?

View attachment 849324 View attachment 849328 View attachment 849323 View attachment 849325 View attachment 849326 View attachment 849329 View attachment 849330 View attachment 849331 View attachment 849327 View attachment 849332

It looks alright and it's functional, but I just feel like we could use a bit more of variety.

It seems like the developers get punished in reviews for trying something different, like the creative menus in Dirt 2 and 3, and the gorgeous artwork in the menus of Milestone's WRC 3.

Maybe we need a thread on great racing game menus.
 
When Sony says it's a Cross.
We all know it's always the X.
The alleged logic doesn't even explain it: "It's 'cross' because they're shapes, not letters." As if 'X' doesn't also describe a shape?
 
I never have seen a game refer to the X button as the “cross” button, but I have seen that name show up in things such as cwcheat for the PSP and things such as configuration files on the PlayStation Classic.

This got me thinking about how my dad used to call the circle button the “O” button when I was younger. Like, I can sort of see why he would think that, but in the end, it’s a circle, not an O.
 
Last edited:
I never heard a single person call it anything other than the "O" button before reading internet discussions. It's fairly common now though. Sure, it's perfectly round(as are a lot of people's O's) but buttons always had letters before Sony so everyone stuck with X and O, which are also slightly simpler and quicker to say than cross or circle. Square and Triangle obviously had no such problem.

At least with Sony there was none of the silly bumper and trigger stuff, everybody knew what L1 and R2 were. But boy, did people get confused when you started talking about R3.
 
I know it kind of started with MMOs and some shooters, but character customization has been getting on my nerves. Mostly with racing games now.... As much as it can be amusing to dress up your driver to look ridiculous or "cool," I really don't need the driver shoved in my face while going through menus. With online play being so big these days, it's all about cool poses, dances, and clothes to show off to everyone else. Forza Horizon 4 made wheel spins even worse with the constant "winnings" of clothes and poses/dances. Not looking forward to seeing what Need For Speed Heat does with the whole character customization....

I just want to play with cars. :grumpy:
 
I really don't need the driver shoved in my face while going through menus.
Stay away from Twisted Metal 2012 then. :lol: You have the driver staring you in the face on the main menus and it varies depending on what character you looked at last. Not just that game, but Twisted Metal Black has Sweet Tooth staring into your soul at the main menu and it's kind of creepy.
maxresdefault.jpg


464967-twisted-metal-black-playstation-2-screenshot-title-screen.png
I never heard a single person call it anything other than the "O" button before reading internet discussions.
It's the other way around for me. My dad was the only one I knew that called it the "O button", meanwhile everyone else called it the "circle button".
Sure, it's perfectly round(as are a lot of people's O's)
Some people write their O's perfectly round, but I think they're technically supposed to be oval-shaped considering that's how I see it everywhere else.
but buttons always had letters before Sony so everyone stuck with X and O, which are also slightly simpler and quicker to say than cross or circle.
I never thought of that. Though I still think it's misleading to call it as such, I understand a little better now why one would call it the "O button". (for the record though, my dad wasn't much of a gamer)
But boy, did people get confused when you started talking about R3.
I know the feeling. It used to confuse me when I was younger.
 
Last edited:
Stay away from Twisted Metal 2012 then. :lol: You have the driver staring you in the face on the main menus and it varies depending on what character you looked at last. Not just that game, but Twisted Metal Black has Sweet Tooth staring into your soul at the main menu and it's kind of creepy.
maxresdefault.jpg


464967-twisted-metal-black-playstation-2-screenshot-title-screen.png

I don't have a problem with Twisted Metal doing it. It makes sense for that series, but just wanting to play with the cars themselves, but instead it feels like I'm playing COD.... Watching the character/driver stand around fidgeting and doing poses is just annoying. As I said, it feels like these racing games almost focus more on the clothing and poses than the cars themselves...
 
When the cockpit camera in a sim is totally rigid...especially when it's not 100% completely rigid.

Like, I guess it's understandable enough if a game opts for a rigid camera as a choice, or because a smaller developer can't be bothered or something. But when the camera almost does not respond to G-forces, but actually does communicate G-forces, just in a very, very muted way that makes it both useless yet distracting...? C'mon. :odd:
 
Back