Idiotic mission objectives
10/12/08 16:19 Filed in: Gaming Gripes
This one annoys me to no end. We’ve all witnessed it in games. It’s the really dumb mission objectives. There’s a couple of different flavours I’m going to talk about today. The mission objectives that leave you scratching your head as to why on earth you’ve been asked to do such a menial task(read: fetch missions). And the objectives that get completely invalidated once you finish a level.
The Fetch Mission. Sometimes fetch missions make sense. These are usually the ones where you are retrieving something that you need in order to finish off some big bad guy or something similar. Hell, some games are one big fetch mission. That’s all well and good. I don’t mind fetch missions that make sense. But then you hit the other ones. You know, the ones where you have to fetch some random item for some jackass, just so that he or she will give you something else to progress through the story? Most of these leave me annoyed and wanting to get all aggro on their asses.
Even KOTOR, my favourite game of all time, is guilty of this kind of mission(and in spades). But at least they give the player a little flexibility. Allowing them to sometimes kill these pricks when they pop up. I remember once using the force to get this one jackass to jump off a cliff. Something that was ridiculously satisfying(I know...I need help).
The WTF Mission Objectives. I played the Wii version of Resident Evil 4 through to completion...and I hated it. Ooooh...blasphemy....how could I tarnish such a monumental game?!?!? With glee. In my opinion, RE4 is a poorly designed game with a few nice technical achievements(for it’s time). I despised this game. I hated the story and acting. This game is among the shittiest of all time in those categories(heh...my spell checker recognizes “shittiest”). But it’s a Japanese game, and I’ll just chalk those shortfalls up to being merely a cultural thing. What I can’t forgive is the absolutely pointless missions that had no bearing on the story.
For example, you’re a secret agent man. You’ve got a girl that you’re supposed to rescue and protect(the president’s daughter no less...scoff). And throughout the course of the game, she is continually being abducted by the bad guys. I shit you not, there are missions where you’ve just gone through hell rescuing her. And after you’ve rescued her, you need to lead her to the end of the next level. But here’s the trick, henchmen will pick her up and take her away from you. If they get away with her, it’s game over. Forcing you to replay the level from the last save point. This can be both annoying and tough. But hey, you’ve just done it. You made it to the end of the level, and the cutscene plays...where the bad guy just swoops in and takes her. Thus restarting the cycle whereby you must go and rescue her again. WTF?!?!? If the big bad was going to take her from you anyways, why was it so terrible when the henchmen took her. Why is it game over when the henchmen does it, but part of the story when the big bad guy does it?!?!? It just doesn’t make any sense. The big problem is that the developers of RE4 just kept going to that fucking well. Over and over and over again. Prompting me to ask whether the developers were trying to pay homage to Donkey Kong or some crazy shit like that.
These kinds of missions are usually just a symptom of a greater problem. Games are expensive. Because of the great prices that players must pay for games, they(deservedly so)tend to want to get as much game as possible. Because of this, developers of “full-priced” games usually like to deliver an experience totaling at least 9-10 hours. RE4 was much longer than that to it’s credit. But then again, I would akin the experience of playing RE4 to removing a bandaid. Better if done quickly. RE4 for me was the game that just didn’t end. But getting back on topic, it’s so damned hard to provide a gaming experience totally 10 hours, all the while keeping it original, and compelling. Bad designers, when presented with such a giant task, tend to fall back into the gaming 101 realm. Lots of shit in there that has nothing to do with the story. Which drives me mental...even when the game has as convoluted a story as RE4.
The Fetch Mission. Sometimes fetch missions make sense. These are usually the ones where you are retrieving something that you need in order to finish off some big bad guy or something similar. Hell, some games are one big fetch mission. That’s all well and good. I don’t mind fetch missions that make sense. But then you hit the other ones. You know, the ones where you have to fetch some random item for some jackass, just so that he or she will give you something else to progress through the story? Most of these leave me annoyed and wanting to get all aggro on their asses.
Even KOTOR, my favourite game of all time, is guilty of this kind of mission(and in spades). But at least they give the player a little flexibility. Allowing them to sometimes kill these pricks when they pop up. I remember once using the force to get this one jackass to jump off a cliff. Something that was ridiculously satisfying(I know...I need help).
The WTF Mission Objectives. I played the Wii version of Resident Evil 4 through to completion...and I hated it. Ooooh...blasphemy....how could I tarnish such a monumental game?!?!? With glee. In my opinion, RE4 is a poorly designed game with a few nice technical achievements(for it’s time). I despised this game. I hated the story and acting. This game is among the shittiest of all time in those categories(heh...my spell checker recognizes “shittiest”). But it’s a Japanese game, and I’ll just chalk those shortfalls up to being merely a cultural thing. What I can’t forgive is the absolutely pointless missions that had no bearing on the story.
For example, you’re a secret agent man. You’ve got a girl that you’re supposed to rescue and protect(the president’s daughter no less...scoff). And throughout the course of the game, she is continually being abducted by the bad guys. I shit you not, there are missions where you’ve just gone through hell rescuing her. And after you’ve rescued her, you need to lead her to the end of the next level. But here’s the trick, henchmen will pick her up and take her away from you. If they get away with her, it’s game over. Forcing you to replay the level from the last save point. This can be both annoying and tough. But hey, you’ve just done it. You made it to the end of the level, and the cutscene plays...where the bad guy just swoops in and takes her. Thus restarting the cycle whereby you must go and rescue her again. WTF?!?!? If the big bad was going to take her from you anyways, why was it so terrible when the henchmen took her. Why is it game over when the henchmen does it, but part of the story when the big bad guy does it?!?!? It just doesn’t make any sense. The big problem is that the developers of RE4 just kept going to that fucking well. Over and over and over again. Prompting me to ask whether the developers were trying to pay homage to Donkey Kong or some crazy shit like that.
These kinds of missions are usually just a symptom of a greater problem. Games are expensive. Because of the great prices that players must pay for games, they(deservedly so)tend to want to get as much game as possible. Because of this, developers of “full-priced” games usually like to deliver an experience totaling at least 9-10 hours. RE4 was much longer than that to it’s credit. But then again, I would akin the experience of playing RE4 to removing a bandaid. Better if done quickly. RE4 for me was the game that just didn’t end. But getting back on topic, it’s so damned hard to provide a gaming experience totally 10 hours, all the while keeping it original, and compelling. Bad designers, when presented with such a giant task, tend to fall back into the gaming 101 realm. Lots of shit in there that has nothing to do with the story. Which drives me mental...even when the game has as convoluted a story as RE4.