Space sims that don’t have simple targeting commands, like “Target closest enemy.”
Not having borderless window as a display option. That is all.
Well, RPS raised some interesting points in their Do and Don’t lists for PC games…
eg
DO let me run the game in a window.
DON’T force me to set difficulty levels at the start of the game, and then refuse to allow me to change it.
DON’T ask me if I’m sure about every single thing I do. Again, here I ultimately want the psychic detection systems in place, so games can only ask me this when I have somehow clicked to close the game instead of return to it, and not when I haven’t, but again I’m exhibiting unusual levels of tolerance here in allowing intermediary measures.
DO allow me to make as many saves as I wish, until my HDD is full. My PC, as much as it may frighten you, is not a Sega Dreamcast.
DO let me pause cutscenes.
DON’T make it difficult for me to quit.
DO make your “RESUME” button be in the same place as you “BACK” button on all menus.
I’m going to have to strongly disagree with this one, at least in certain circumstances. If I choose to play on a higher difficulty level I had to unlock by completing the game, make me commit to that. If clearing the game on Very Hard unlocks some special bonus for future playthroughs and your game still has the option to change difficulty level mid-game, absolutely don’t give that reward to someone who played on Very Hard for five minutes and then dropped down to Normal for the rest of the game.
Nah, that’s not really a disagreement. The obvious correct implementation there is to let you adjust the difficulty at will, but grant rewards at the end based on the lowest difficulty used at any point in the playthrough.
I want to have to work and develop mastery and earn my victories, but I also don’t want to get stuck five hours in with no option but to restart from the beginning. Knowing that I can drop the difficulty down if needed gives me the freedom to start on hard and enjoy the game more.
ledShok took mine!
This is less of a problem these days. Mostly older games.
-japanese console to pc ports that use weird-ass random keyboard letter keys for select/cancel instead of space/enter and arrow keys
Those weird-ass letter keys are what they use for standard over there and have done so for years.
I mean, Z and X aren’t weird. What’s weird is when you run into a game where half the keys are mapped across the keyboard and the numpad and such. I ran into that just the other day with the Steam version of Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code.
The Borderless Gaming app on Steam works for a lot of games, but it’s not perfect (or at least, some games ‘fight’ its efforts).
I don’t understand complaint #10, can someone explain it?
Ever played with MAME? :)
I think it refers to the message you see on console ports telling you not to turn your machine off when you see the save/load icon spinning.
I plug in a controller or remap the keys before I start playing a given game in MAME, so it hasn’t been a problem in roughly twelve years. :P
You are probably trolling/joking but I meant the port inexplicably using U and J or something for the select/cancel buttons by default.
I meant ZXC, which is the most common setup I see, occasionally ASD.
Invisible barriers: I honestly don’t mind falling into the water if I walk off the cliff.
[Related]: I don’t want to die the second I hit the water. Let me swim. As far out as I want to.
[Related]: No more “You are leaving the mission area. Return in 5…4…3…”
No more context-sensitive jumping. I wanna jump whenever I hit that space bar, and I wanna jump on things that are low or high enough that make sense.
Those first three aren’t really issues in most cases. Not every game is open-world and it’s unreasonable to expect them to be.
Now, in actual open-world games, yes, those are a problem!
As for wanting to get rid of context-sensitive jumping: you and every speedrunner on the planet.
The worst part is that games made 20 years ago had this. You could sprint across a gap, ‘land’ on a ladder and continue climbing - what the fuck happened with this? It’s certainly not a technological reason because as I said - 20 fucking years ago we had this. It feels like developers want to carefully control every facet of player experience. God forbid someone gets stuck on a platform somewhere with no way off - instead we get these shitty contextual actions followed by awkward shuffle of the character into position - and even then it fails sometimes (Witcher 3’s ladders for example)!!
Seriously, what happened.
I blame Ocarina of Time. That was the first game I remember playing which automatically jumped for you. And that is still the best reviewed game of all time, so I think a lot of other games started following in its footsteps.
Edit: Just a technical note, it looks like Ocarina of Time is still the top reviewed game of all time on metacritic, but it’s now number 2 on gamerankings, passed by Super Mario Galaxy.