Headshots & Friendly Fire: Round 7
The gaming industry has gotten bigger and better with each passing year, but sometimes they just don’t do things right. Whether it’s game play, story, pricing, or business practice, sometimes the industry needs a little friendly fire from the gamers to keep it in line.
Other times, developers look down their sight and fire off a well placed bullet right into our unexpected head. This is Josh & Cameron, and this is Headshots & Friendly Fire.
A Bit of Friendly Fire
Friendly NPC’s that die too quickly
There are tons of these in games. If I am presented with a friendly NPC, it’s always wise to just assume they have as much health as Level 1 pup skag. (I’ve been playing a lot of borderlands, lately) Of course, when I am presented with these NPC’s, I’m going to either have to protect them or they will be vital to my mission in some other way. During certain missions of Killzone 2, you will need your teammates to either draw fire for you or help you kill enemies. This isn’t a problem on the lower difficulties, but on elite difficulty some missions could be replayed for hours due to the total ineptitude of your teammates in battle. In Clive Barker’s Jericho, my entire group of teammates can we wiped out with a single blast from an enemy, even on easy difficulty. (see H&F Round 4 for my rant on exploding enemies) If developers need to make an NPC that is vital to a mission, then give that NPC unlimited health. I don’t want to fail a mission because my ally screwed up, and allowed the enemy to flank me. If an ally is going to have limited health then he must be as smart as me, and no dev has been able to pull that off yet.
Tacked on Combat
There have been a couple of recent games that have really been guilty of just tacking on a combat for the sack of having one or not fleshing out the combat that they should have, leaving it as the weakest link in the game. The first one to come to mind is Mirror’s Edge, which despite one of the worst control schemes in history had a lot going for it. The one thing however that was a sore spot during the entire game was the tacked on and forced combat. The developer spent the whole development cycle fleshing out a pretty fluid system of free running through the world and then forced a funky and terrible combat system on the player when it was not needed. I am sure they did this to hopefully appease and bring over the FPS fans. Another example would be a game I am currently reviewing and that is SAW. The developer spent so much time fleshing out the environment and making sure it had that edge to it that the movies carried, then just hurried the combat to the scene it feels like. If you are going to put combat in your game and the player is going to have to use it more than a few times then you should at least put a good amount of time and effort into it, especially enough to match the rest of the game.
Grey Death Screen
If you have decided to ditch the healthbar in your videogame, then you are going to need some way of letting the player know he has more lead in him than a 1940’s paint can, and is about to die. The newest trend has to been to put either red blurs or bloodstains around the edge of the screen. Some developers have also decided that the screen should go completely black and white as well. The color palette in most games doesn’t vary much, so when your screen does go all Noir on you, it means you can’t see a damn thing. So, in a situation when you need to pay the most attention and be the most alert, the game has put this handicap on you. This leads to you dying a lot more than you should under normal circumstances. The worst offender, by far, is Modern Warfare 2. When you take any amount of damage, the game splatters translucent red water on the screen. Were the terrorists in the middle of painting Easter Eggs? Are the terrorists throwing Kool-Aid at me? This definitely isn’t more realistic, and it hinders gameplay so much. How could anyone at Infinity Ward think this was a good idea? As for other games, people often claim the grey death screen is more realistic than a health bar, and we always have to do whatever is the most realistic, but I’m sure these people have never seen a gun, let alone been in a near death experience, so their opinion still remains just an opinion and not the almighty word of God, as they would have you believe.
Your a boss, really??
So when I usually think of boss battles, I think of the end of a tough level where now i must use all I have learned during that level to tackle a tough boss. Yet in some games developers must think that they need to spare us gamers because the level was a bit tough or long, so they throw in the weakest boss or the most pathetic boss battle they can think of. A big culprit of this was the game WET, which saw you in the epic end battle of the game playing the QTE’s game with the end boss. I mean was this really the best they could come up with to end the game with? Under no circumstance should you end a pretty entertaining game with a cheap boss battle. I mean really as great as Batman AA was, the end fight was a joke. Too many times are we getting to end bosses only to be treated to the work fight sequences in the game. An end boss should be there to test us, not give us an easy trophy.
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18 Responses to “Headshots & Friendly Fire: Round 7”
Haha you goes just get to the point without exagerating. Awesome and true stuff!
“but I’m sure these people have never seen a gun, let alone been in a near death experience, so their opinion still remains just an opinion and not the almighty word of God, as they would have you believe.”
Now, I am one of those people that hasn’t seen a gun in person, almost was in a near death experience, but I might not of died if it had happened so I dunno…
But I would go as far as to say being hit with bullets DOES NOT help the situation at all. Yeah its just a videogame, yeah it doesn’t have to get the screen all bloody, but what do you expect happens when you get shot? Bringing real life into this screwed you over because there is no possible way anyone that has survived war in real life would agree a health bar is more realistic. Going by what you’re saying we should be able to focus after we’re shot 5 times, and that this would be more realistic. HA.
“This leads to you dying a lot more than you should under normal circumstances.”
Under normal circumstances in war people die. A lot.
“The ratio of stress casualties to battle casualties varies with the intensity of the fighting, but with intense fighting it can be as high as 1:1. In low-level conflicts it can drop to 1:10 (or less).” BULLETS DO NOT HURT AND I CAN PERFORM PERFECTLY IN ANY SITUATION. yeah right, go play mario. I bet all the people that were messed up without being physically injured were faking it, and since their health bar was full they’re good to go.
Thank God I tought I was the only one who thought the final boss fight on Batman was WAAAAY too easy.
@ johnny
ofcourse health bars arn’t realistic. I wasn’t saying they were. Having your vision obscured with “blood” splatter or a black and grey screen isn’t any more realistic than a health bar. So instead of doing what is “realistic,” game devs should do what makes the gameplay more fun, and that is definitely not the grey death screen. I think the blood splatter in MW2 really hurts the game
@Trexman
I’m telling you that doesn’t make any sense. How an actual health condition(not to mention getting shot makes you bleed, and blood does splatter) isn’t any more realistic than a visual display of how much health you have left is beyond me. I could go ahead and say removing a health bar and having blood spatter or anything else adds to the challenge, and more of a challenge means more fun. Limiting the HUD also makes a game look more like you’re actual there instead of just playing a game, which can add to the fun. Also, anyone that owns a plasma TV is fucked if they play for too long.
Thinking about it, you might be just complaining because in MW2 it looks too much like jam and calling out MW2 is the cool thing to do here.
@johnny
screen burn in doesnt register if movements present.. with newer plasmas its a thing of the past.
@trexman:
it makes me laugh when people needed a health bar in a game that can take you 2-4sec to die. Do you really need a health meter for those 3 seconds of life or less if its a headshot? In KZ2 the AI was intelligent even in veteran mode. thats why you never expect the AI to kill everyone. exploding enemies in a game where you guide them (Jerico) is a bad example. that just means youd prefers less control. Just because your playing with an AI partner doesnt mean you let them to handle everything ..
@Joshtork
Really? i could have sworn theres tons of exaggerations or strange examples ..
agreed with the end boss statement- dead space was a big victim of this. The final boss was hardly menacing- especially in comparison to the surprise hoards of enemies that would get tougher and tougher and continually flank you.
Ah, the age old question of realism in video games. Which would be that no video game on the market, or ever has been, is 100% realistic. Let’s face it. Sometimes you just have to throw realism out the window. Hell, I’m still trying to figure out how racing games can be realistic when I’ve never been able to fit my couch into the front seat of my car.
Great stuff!
I want to be able to see what i am shooting at. it doesn’t matter if its a health bar or red tinge on the screen, i just need to be able to see. When the screen goes black and white, it hinders your ability to see enemies, so thats bad. When blood splatters on the screen in MW2, you can’t see, so that is also bad.
@Trexman
of course , just how in real life you need to see clearly when people shoot you.
@Trexman
If you’ve been shot enough to see all that red you need to get your head down, not eat the bullets while trying to find him. Toss a flashbang and now they can’t see, it works both ways you know. They didn’t put it there so they could laugh at you when you’re shot and to make it worse, it’s to let you know you just took a couple rounds to the chest and that’s not good.
l agre with the lame drey death screens, it’s a joke to handicap u any further since your about already, l could barely see anything. l agree with u also about gamefly, l played a lot of games and it’s all thanks to its rental service
I agree about the lame bosses in game especially if they are end game bosses. The lamest for me would probably be the one in Dead Space. Leviathan was a harder boss than the last boss. It’s really so easy that you could prevent yourself from getting hurt even in impossible mode. For starters, DeadSpace is no easy game especially in Impossible mode. The Last boss was really disappointing, they just put a large necromorph with orange targets, really??
Thank god someone else hates the MW2 Jelly. It doesn’t even look like blood! And really, at some point as a game developer, and a player, you have to ask yourself…. when does the “realism” detract from the fun? Wheres the line? The line is that damn screen jelly I see every time I get shot. Its aggravating, its ugly, and its unnecessary. On the completely opposite end of this topic is Batman AA, where I actually enjoyed dieing sometimes, since your enemies would taunt you, and it changed based on where in the game you were and who was your current opponent. That was frickin’ cool.
On the friendly NPC thing, RE5 was definitely guilty of this. I give Sheva a desert eagle and a rocket launcher both with infinite ammo. On cover mode, she won’t fire either of these weapons, at all (I guess the AI thinks they’re too powerful?). On attack mode she will, but only after running up to mere inches from an enemies face, in which case she dies. This literally makes the game unplayable on pro mode with out a human partner. Undoubtedly its more fun with a human partner, but a good one isn’t always available. Good AI should be.
hah RE5….
No AI is going to get it right- look at Army of 2. It was advertised as the best AI possible, acting like another human… and we all know how mediocre that turned out.