Old School Gaming Pet Peeves

Here are some things that I absolutely despise about old school games, though sometimes you might even find these things in current generation games as well.

1. When you’re left without any clues of where to head next (especially in an RPG), and you’re forced to wander the world for hours not knowing where to go until you find some switch event that will trigger the next part of the game. It’s like developers expected gamers to have psychic powers and be able to figure out magically which place they need to go to next.
2. Insane difficulty levels, followed by few continues quickly turn-off casual gamers, leaving them hanging with a game they can’t use past level one or two.
3. One-hit K.O.’s: I have always hated this, even in later games such as Crash Bandicoot or The Getaway. I think it’s unnecessary to try and make a game so real that it becomes tedious and annoying just like real life. It might be a little interesting as a small challenge in a level, but once everything you touch kills you, it’s really time to tone it down.
4. Games with crappy manuals: Thanks for telling me about all the characters, now where’s the explanation on how to operate this game? I think one of the best manuals I may have seen (of course I haven’t read all manuals), was when I bought Metal Gear Solid 2. They really did a good job of explaining what you can do with the characters.
5. RPG’s with awful fonts to them. It’s bad enough that the whole game has a crap load of text, don’t make me stare an ugly font the whole time.
6. Lack of save points in RPGs. The world won’t ever care that I just beat one of the most difficult bosses and leveled up ten levels, if I can’t reach a save point to save my progress in time before enemies wipe me out. This mainly occurs in RPG games where you can’t save on a world map.

~ by Carlos on November 23, 2008.