Quote Originally Posted by GhandiOwnsYou View Post
So you had a blast playing this game right? I mean really, you've played all the way through to the last level, you MUST enjoy the gameplay here. So we're going to shake things up a bit, and make the last bit of the game COMPLETELY DIFFERENT than the game you've been playing so far. Have fun dying repeatedly, turning your dramatic escape into a cavalcade of trial, error, and rote memorization. Notable Abusers: Devil May Cry, Halo, Portal
While I agree with the sentiment here, I disagree with your using Portal as an example. Every part of Portal up until the escape is meant to train you to use the Portal gun. To get you to learn what it can do, gradually build on what you learn, and get you to recognize situations and surfaces where it can be used, and how it can be used. The escape doesn't change anything except that you now have one long interconnected area to get through instead of smaller test chambers, and the visuals are different. But all of the situations that you encounter are ones you've already seen, and while there is more to see and do, that's the point. You're now an expert at using the Portal gun and it's time to throw you into an unfamiliar situation so you can really show off your skills.

As to game design decisions I hate with a passion, fetch quests are a big one. If the best quest you can come up with is go get me 10 of these and 15 of those then there's a good chance I'll stop playing your game, because that sort of busy work is one of the most boring things imaginable, and 9 times out of 10 you're a bad game designer padding game length artificially if you use them. At the very least couple it with exploring a new area so I don't want to kill myself.

Quote Originally Posted by VeloZer0
Not being able to remap the controls. This is the twenty first century, there isn't any reason not to give me the ability to control the game as I like.
I once read a GamePro issue in either the late 90's or early 2000's where in the letter section someone asked the editor under the alias Major Mike why he always knocked off half a point on the controls score if you can't customize them and would make a point of always pointing it out in his reviews. He said that he once talked to someone at Capcom to find out how long it would typically take for them to implement fully customizable controls in a game. They said it would be half a day to a days work usually.

There is a reason that has stuck with me so vividly for so many years. There is absolutely no excuse for not implementing so basic and simple a feature in a game. Ever. Sure, I love when a company works at perfecting their default control scheme, but nothing pisses me off more than having no option to change it if I don't like it. One of the things I absolutely despised about Resistance 2 was that the controls were almost nothing like COD4 (the other thing I despised being everything else. Zing!), which at the time was about as perfect as I could imagine console FPS controls being. But I couldn't just change them to match that and had to suffer through pressing the wrong buttons half the time.

And this is coming from someone who has never failed to learn and get comfortable with a control scheme inside of 15 minutes. I was halfway through the game and still trying to press buttons like it was COD4.