There’s nothing better than falling in love with a new game, but that doesn’t change the fact that very few games are perfect. Even if you’re having a fantastic time working through a new adventure, there are, more often than not, a couple of irksome details in the game design that you’d much rather be without.
While these small issues aren’t game-breaking by any means, they’re problems that would make the game undoubtedly better if they were fixed. Even though it’s likely too late to make these changes now, it’s satisfying to imagine what these games would be like if they didn’t have these issues.
If Blue Prince makes one thing very clear, it’s that they want you to grab your closest notepad or stack of paper, and note down just about everything you find while playing the game. This can create some great moments when you finally work out some of its secrets, but it’s really hard to know when you should note something down, and when you should just leave it be.
Leaving the responsibility of keeping track of every piece of information to you is nice in the sense that you’re not having your hand held at all, but it can make the game notably more arduous to work through. When asimilar game like Outer Wildshad such a simple but effective method of keeping track of information gathered, it makes the lack of a similar option in Blue Prince feel like a missed opportunity.
You’ll struggle to find a game like Metal: Hellsinger. A combination of a first-person shooter with a heavy metal-themed rhythm game shouldn’t work as well as it does, but working through each of Hellsinger’s perfectly styled fire-and-brimstone levels is as invigorating as it is challenging.
However, each level ends with a bit of a damper, with the same boss capping each stage. While it might have a new gimmick or twist, it’s largely the same, and it makes the end of each level feel like a slog. Not every level needs a boss to finish it, especially if it’s the same boss. Luckily, the final level at least has a unique finale, but at that point, it feels like the bare minimum.
The Ace Attorney series are visual novel games, and they take full advantage of the genre to tell some of the most interesting and entertaining stories in gaming. Each Ace Attorney game features a selection of cases to work through, and the trend tends to be that they’ll get longer the further you get into the game.
While the early-to-mid-game cases tend to be perfectly paced, the later game cases tend to really drag. It gets to the point sometimes that you’ve worked through so many twists and turns that by the time you look back, you’ll realize that hours of gameplay ended up being entirely irrelevant. While this issue plagues every Ace Attorney game to a degree, the prequels have some of the most egregious examples.
Square Enix put plenty of effort into ensuring that you follow the story of Final Fantasy 16. The complex narrative provides plenty of tools for keeping track of places, people, and events, and it’s effective at ensuring you never feel lost.
However, it’s a shame that the adventure itself can end up feeling quite lonely. Compared to the previous Final Fantasy 15, where the party was so narratively strong, Clive spending so much of his adventure by himself (or sometimes a canine companion) makes the story feel like it’s lacking a little personality. On top of this, while the combat is interesting, it could’ve been more engaging with permanent party members by your side.
First-person movement shooters have rapidly grown in popularity in recent years, and one of the most polished and aesthetically pleasing is Neon White. You’ll find yourself rushing through demon-infested vaporwave-inspired scenery, and it’s a joy to play from beginning to end.
However, in between these levels, you’ll be forced to suffer through the game’s unfortunately abysmal story. At the start, it shows potential, but by the end, you’ll be mashing through conversations wanting to get back to the fantastic gameplay. The game didn’t need a story, and if it did, it really didn’t need the one it’s stuck with.
A common observation of South of Midnight is that it feels like the type of game we don’t get very often anymore. The PS2-era-inspired combination of3D platforming and action gameplayworks well, and with modern polish, it manages to feel nostalgic without being dated.
However, by the time you get to the last few hours of the game, you’ll end up looking forward to the platforming a lot more than the combat. That’s because South of Midnight is incredibly stingy with its selection of enemy NPCs, with barely a handful available to fight. This makes the speedy combat feel monotonous, and just a few more enemies would’ve made fights feel much less repetitive.
The Pokemon series has been criminally glacial when it comes to progression in their mainline titles. It feels like the RPG giant stubbornly insists on adding minor adjustments and trivial generation-locked features with each new game, but that’s part of why the structural changes in the Paldea games felt so surprising.
Technically given free rein to attack the Gyms, Team Star leaders, and Titan Pokemon in any order, you might think that Scarlet and Violet are the most open games in the series, but it stumbles with one significant issue. Every challenge and area is stuck at the same level, and won’t progress throughout the game, so while you have the illusion of free will, you still need to do most goals in pretty much the same order as usual.
The Legend of Zelda series is popular for many reasons, but historically, its expertly designed dungeons have been the core appeal. One of the best 3D Zelda titles is Twilight Princess, featuring some of the most diverse and challenging dungeons from throughout the entire series, but they’re unfortunately paced awfully.
After slogging through the charming, if not lengthy, tutorial, the first handful of dungeons are spread out with plenty of distractions forced in between each. Then, in the game’s final act, it feels like you’ll be speed-running through challenging dungeons back to back, racing to the finale. If this pacing was spread evenly throughout the entire game, Twilight Princess wouldn’t end up feeling so pear-shaped.
Whilethe first Resident Evilwas the official start to the series, it feels like Resident Evil 2 was the real beginning of what the series went on to become. Introducing Leon and Claire, you’re given the option to choose either of their overlapping adventures to play first, and then the other second to get the full story.
The first playthrough is an enjoyable challenge, but if you move straight onto the other campaign, you’ll notice overwhelming similarities. Even if you’ll have some events glossed over on a second playthrough, it doesn’t feel like enough, especially with how many identical puzzles you’ll be repeating. Not only is it boring to repeat content, but it also kills the immersion that Claire and Leon are supposed to be working through their campaigns simultaneously.
El Shaddai is a game that’s hard to concisely summarize, combining beat ‘em up gameplay with some of the most abstract storytelling and unconventional platforming presentation — you won’t find anything else like it.
However, with such an off-the-wall premise, the game’s development budget was stretched past its limits, and the final project was rushed to completion, with the planned ending out of sight, and a quick substitute shoved in instead. It makes the promising game jarring to finish, and even if new editions include a short story covering the planned ending, it’s definitely not the same as what was intended.
