Massive game flaws that we just accept

Broken bits of gaming that we end up ignoring

Words: GamesRadar_NathanIrvine on April 30, 2010

Regardless of whether you've noticed, or whether we're being completely pedantic about this whole issue, a lot of A-grade games have duff flaws in them. And what do we do? Accept it. We play all the way through the game ignoring some of the stuff that in any other title we'd have dashed back to the shop and demanded a refund.

So here's a look at the some of the biggest games we could find that contain incredible flaws that we we're happy to overlook...

Grand Theft Auto series

Flaws: Broken mission checkpoints, pop-up

Let's kick off with a controversial one, eh? Only the most blinkered GTA fan would suggest that it's perfect in every way. For us, especially with the earlier games, the mission restart points were a damn mess - often putting you miles away from a target that's a mega schlep to get to in the first place.

Above: Steady on that hog otherwise you'll be restarting this, man

Examples? How about the The Driver mission in Vice City? Here's a race against the AI where every second counts. Roll your car near the finish line and it's back to the start for you, sonny. Or I Need Your Clothes, Your Boots and Your Motorcycle in GTAIV that sees you chase a guy through the subway on a motorbike. Screw your bike into a wall and he's gone, leaving you to not only have to restart the mission again but to drive your way back over there too.

Aside from the checkpoint faux-pas there's also the fact that at times when you're travelling at break-neck speed, the world - road, vehicles and buildings - disappear in front of your eyes.

Uncharted

Flaw: Identikit enemies

Nathan Drake - lover, fighter, adventurer and, umm, ethnic cleanser? Of course the last one is sensationalism at it's finest but think about it, most of the pirates that Uncharted's hero comes up against are identical and by the end of the game you've merked hundreds of them.

Above: "I'm gonna 'eff you up, then your doppleganger, buddy"

Sure, they might try to fox us by wearing slightly different coloured hats, bandanas and vests, but they all look almost identical. Do we care or question this? Hell no. We're too busy reloading and lining up headshots to care.

Killzone 2

Flaw: Knife > guns

STAB! TWIST! KILL! Ah, the knife is perfect for those up close and personal kills in FPS games, but they should only ever be a last resort measure. The video above typifies the over-powered ability of the humble knife. You're playing a shooter, so why the heck would your most dangerous ally be a damn knife?

It's not only KZ2 that suffers this fate either. Battlefield Bad Company allows you to carve through a chain-link fence with a knife and the cutter in Modern Warfare 2 is more powerful than most of the rifles.

FIFA/Pro Evolution Soccer

Flaw: Player's inexplicably pulling up

Ah, a chipped long ball over your defence. You track the flight of the ball with your defender expertly while the chasing attacker is labouring behind. A simple back pass to the keeper and it's danger averted, except it isn't. More often than not your player will pull up as if their hamstring just twanged up their ass - leaving the forward to nip in a slot one home. Argh!

Above: The scenario is down to bad scripting rather than Heskey's pace

This fault is as common place in football games as scoring an absolute screamer from outside the area. We understand that these things can happen in real-life but when you see it unfolding like a shit-stained blanket your fury is all ready to blame the game's scripting. And we won't be accepting human error anytime soon. Let's give this transparent momentum shift the red card, eh, developers?

Guitar Hero

Flaw: Not always playing guitar chords

Parts of songs that are *definitely* played on guitars - the incredible solo at the end of Lynard Skynard's Free Bird, the intro to Black Sabbath's Paranoid and most of the racket in The Sex Pistol's Pretty Vacant. Parts of songs that aren't - the flute bit in A-Punk by Vampire Weekend and countless more in Guitar Hero.

Above: 0:46 in for the flute solo!

Sure, the toy guitar is meant to make you feel like a genuine axe-wielder like Slash but when different instruments are tacked on just to fill some otherwise down time, the illusion is pissed upon. Only Peter Frampton can get away with making his guitar do different noises.

Platforms:

Xbox 360, PS3, PS2

44 comments

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GamesRadar_NathanIrvine - May 5, 2010 8:01 a.m.

@JackSkellingtonsSkin You got me. Stupid mistake . I bet you couldn't enjoy the article because of this glaring error, right?
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Silverstone - May 5, 2010 3:41 a.m.

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sdrfhsdkjfhsd - May 5, 2010 1:28 a.m.

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JackSkellingtonsSkin - May 4, 2010 9:54 p.m.

A light-year is a measure of distance and not a measure of time. Just sayin'
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GamesRadar_NathanIrvine - May 4, 2010 9:10 a.m.

@NormanD I see what you're saying about the whole journalist explanation for the plot hole but at no point whatsoever was this alluded to. I'm usually all for reading between the lines with things like this but with the reveal being so integral to the last hour of the game it's disappointing to say the least. After loving it immensely,this shortcoming was hard to take but as the whole feature is based on, I ignored it because I was hooked by everything else.
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asswatcher - May 4, 2010 1:19 a.m.

flash light dynamics: i.e. uncharted two: even though your body is turned away from the screen, the flashlight at your hip follows the head's movements.
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Vitoruss1 - May 3, 2010 8:07 p.m.

How in games like Grand Theft Auto, you can carry a ton of weapons and not see so much as a rifle on your back or a pistol under your waistband. The guns just appear in your hands! The fourth game helped a little bit by putting a "pulling out a gun" animation, but still, nothing too realistic. Before the game released, I was excited at the shots of Niko with a duffel-bag on his back, making it seem like he would carry his weapons in there and pull them out of the bag (I would've been happy even if it WAS a giant black hole with unlimited space, but at least it APPEARED realistic). Although it didn't affect my love for the game, I still would've liked to see that.
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Mattattack - May 3, 2010 5:56 p.m.

That mining mini-game on Mass Effect 2 rally pissed me off! The rest of the game is so brilliant, yet that seemed to be one big-ass flaw!
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curly_jefferson - May 2, 2010 1:48 p.m.

couldn't hat those mining mini games more
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Marvelfan13 - May 2, 2010 2:45 a.m.

I disagree with the guitar hero one. I love how they chart different instruments. Its a plastic guitar, not a real one. What difference does it make if your playing flutes instead guitar? Would you rather there not be a guitar part at al in those songs like A-Punk? I agree with GTA though. They really need to fix that.
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JaKhris - May 2, 2010 12:24 a.m.

Just wanted to say, concerning the Mass Effect 2 part, that a light-year is a distance (distance travelled by light in one year), not a time span. But I can agree to some points mentioned in the post.
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joshdaman123 - May 1, 2010 8:58 p.m.

@ Paragon doesnt lightyears also measure the TIME it takes for light to travel said distance? not completely sure, just putting in my two cents, cuz if its true, then how nathan used it in the article was valid silly goose ^.^
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linkganon - May 1, 2010 7:50 p.m.

@ClusterShart you mean this right. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWWfEs6STfI i realize he uses stealth most of the time, but when not, the guards are idiots. i know it's an infamous song to start but whatever.
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crumbdunky - May 1, 2010 2:11 p.m.

Any article moaning about R2 and NOT mentioning the anti swim device called Furies should be ashamed. If devs aren't going to allow us to swim to safety they could, at least, make it so the water's electrified/contaminated in some way that kills you with prolonged exposure-sing omnipotent swimmy Chimera is not fair. We can kill anything else in the game so having these immortal halfbreeds sucks massively. See lso Scarface's sharks and VC's T Vercetti's fear of swimming in general! Put a little effort in or DON'T put water in. Then there's my least fave thing of all-the invisible wall or two foot obstacle that stops you and whatever army you're with when in reality you'd just step over it. I know devs of scripted games need to funnel us in a certain direction but doing it like this is irksome and lazy. Imagination please. Worst recent offender was, imo, parts of Wolfenstein where you could actually use the invisible wall to guage where to attack from in one boss fight rendering you almost invincible on any setting-and the number of desks, tables and two foot gates that impeded me was incredible. these instances are so widespread, though, that it's harsh to single iD's half assed update of their series out for it too much. Can I add crap cameras please? Even in a good game like, say, Bayonetta, the camera and it's lax control or turn speed can wreck your experience by allowing deaths from offscreen enemies and screwing you over by showing you JST the corner you're backed into, the best killing you but not your own character. NG2 on 360 is TERRIBLE for this crap(as are many games of many genres-the camera in CCCB recently was terrible too)but we, again, have to manage with it.
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gilgamesh310 - May 1, 2010 10:41 a.m.

The GTA series has a lot more flaws than that.The way in which cops can bust you for say killing a hundred civilians and you appear outside the station with your weapons gone is completely ridiculous and incredibly annoying. There was that level in GTA:San Andreas where you had to control remote control planes which was IMO one of the worst levels ever devised in a game and that was a game that as far as I know was the highest rated game in the series. None of the GTA games deserve the mammoth scores they get. Just because a game gives you more stuff to do than most other games reviewers think that can make up for their flaws and be better than any other game.
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philipshaw - May 1, 2010 10:08 a.m.

With Killzone 2 you forgot that you are only like 4 feet tall in the game, you come up to most characters waists
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NormanD - May 1, 2010 6:31 a.m.

seriously, what's with you guys and Heavy Rain......but whether your right about it or not, you obviously don't know what a plot hole is, her understanding of who the name belongs to without necessarily meeting him isn't a plot hole unless there's no way to explain it. Consider the fact that she is a journalist who has been tracking just about everything that's been happening with the case and everyone involved with it so there's a good chance that she came across some information about him. That's one possible explanation for it, so there, not a plot hole. Lawyered.
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spideralex90 - May 1, 2010 6:30 a.m.

I actually liked the mass effect mining game, it was better than driving the mako to the opposite end of the map to get a tiny amount of minerals.
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NanoElite666 - May 1, 2010 5:10 a.m.

Here's one for ya. The gunplay in the Jak games post-Precursor Legacy (not including X obviosly), specifically Jak's inability to strafe. Not being able to keep your gun pointed straight while still moving about is very annoying, especially coming back to one of those games after having spent time playing another game where strafing is second nature. Jak, buddy, we love ya, but please to take some shooting lessons from Ratchet or Drake or someone before your next big adventure.
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Jacko415 - May 1, 2010 2:40 a.m.

A. THE FUCKING BLUE SHELL IN MARIO KART B. If you're sniping in GTA IV from a rooftop thats very far away, kill one person and the cops automatically know EXACTLY where you are C. in Crysis the trailers show you combining all your powers into fluid bad-assery. but in-game your suit gives you enough suitpower to do one thing really quickly then wait like a sitting duck.
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