IMO: The Top 5 Worst Video Game Mistakes

This is going to be a tricky one. When I say Video Game Mistakes, I don't mean something silly that is left in the game by accident, I mean when the makers of a game go ahead and fuck everything up and do something that is so totally stupid that you lose the will to live. This has happened many time, the most noteable that people talk about is Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness which took the first two words of the title "Tomb" and "Raider" and figured they didn't mean anything, having no Tombs or Raiding to be done. This however is not on my list.

5) The Half Life 2 plot.

Half Life was an epic First Person Shooter, it didn't need cutscenes to tell a wonderful narrative. The game was clever, gripping and fun to play.

The plot of Half Life 1 is thus, you are Gordon Freeman, a scientist who works in the Black Mesa

laboratory. When of your experiments goes wrong, portals to an alien world open and the lab is over-run by strange creatures. All you know is that you need to escape. Halfway through the game, troops arrive but you find out they are to clean out the lab and leave no survivors. A mysterious man in a suit is seen at different moments in the game and as the game ends he offers you two choices, join him or die. The "cannon" ending is that Gordon joins him.

The game itself is awesome to play through, there were moments of sheer joy when you had an epic firefight and then were able to take a few breaths to get yourself calmed down, only to be in another one a few seconds later. Add into the mix a sense of exploration in a secret government laboratory and you had one of the best FPS games ever made. Everyone wanted a sequel, fan made sequel mods were made but years passed as everyone looked to Valve to bring Gordon Freeman back for a second round with monsters.

Half Life 2 was released in 2004 to rave reviews but as much as everyone loves it and worships it, you cannot deny one thing, it doesn't feel like a continuation of the story. It was like Half Life was Chapter 1 and Half Life 2 is Chapter 3 or 4. There is something missing in the middle. There is a huge chunk of story that is missing and because of that I, personally, feel the game is harder to get into. Gordon left Black Mesa with the G-Man and at the start of Half Life 2 the G-Man is telling him to wake up, so he's been asleep the whole time? That is just lazy! And I don't mean Gordon, I mean the storytelling. I think Valve looked at Half Life and cacked their pants, they knew they had a epic story and had to top it, so they got baked and watched a whole shit load of Sci-Fi movies and Anime and came up with the idea for Half Life 2 in this future where Earth is over-run by an alien race called The Combine. There is no other reason to do this storyline. I do not deny the game is good and some moments are impressive but the plot leave a lot to be desired. If you are going to tell a story, fill in the blanks, don't drop us off in the future and go "enjoy". Its bad storytelling, and I doesn't feel like a continuation of the first game. They could have released this as a different game and still got great reviews and had Gordon Freeman come back in the REAL Half Life 2.

4) The treatment of Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Solid series

Lets be honest here, 90% of the Metal Gear Solid fan's first introduction to Solid Snake was in Metal Gear Solid on the Playstation. Hardly anyone played the first 2 games on the NES and MSX. Its the truth, and Metal Gear Solid is an epic tale, it rates up in there in my top 5 games of all time, it is like a movie in which you are the lead and I loved every damn second of it. So much so that I have completed the game numerous times. When Metal Gear Solid ended, the world cried out for a sequel, people wanted to play as Solid Snake some more.

Metal Gear Solid 2 was released and had you as Solid Snake infiltrating a tanker. This introduction to the game lasted about forty five minutes to an hour depending on how you played the game. Once the tanker section was done, wham your some pussy little white haired bitch called Raiden. I mean, what the fuck? I don't care about Jack and his Girlfriend Rose having their "deep" conversations over codec, I want to play as the epic soldier Solid Snake. A short time into the story you team up with Snake but he is masquerading as a Delta Force solider, and its only at the very end does he reveal himself and you fight beside him.

The game ends and that's it, the big wait for MGS2 and you play as Snake for an hour! That was it? Come on! Well we didn't have long to wait as MGS3 was announced, yay! And we were told that yes, you would be playing as Snake, teaser trailers showed this.

MGS3: Snake Eater was released and once again we were not playing as Solid Snake, you were playing as Naked Snake, aka Big Boss. Who is Solid Snake's father, or we should say, Solid Snake is a clone of Naked Snake. It's all very convoluted, but the fact remains, you were not playing as Solid Snake. We wanted to play as Solid Snake, as he continues the story that began back in the first Metal Gear Solid. That was the game that introduced us properly to Snake and where we realised how epic he truly was, we wanted to play as THAT guy again, not his father who is in the jungle in the 60s.

The announcement then came that Metal Gear Solid 4 was in production and WOULD continue the MGS story, and you WOULD be playing as Solid Snake finally! Then we were introduced to Snake in a trailer for the game, WHAT THE FUCK? Snake is an old man? We are finally getting to play as Solid Snake again and he's an old timer! What the hell is wrong with you Hideo Kojima(creator of MGS and Solid Snake)? Are you on crack? Do you not realise what people want? They want to play as Solid Snake from the MGS and MGS2 era, and have some new sneaking missions, they don't want to play as the Snake who has to get up 3 times in the middle of the night to take a piss. Then we get some babble about how Snake has aged prematurely and its integral to the story that he be that way, well you know what Kojima, FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU UP YOUR STUPID ASS! You didn't have to do that, you could have kept Snake at the same age and had some cool shit happening, but no, you had to tell your "story" and in doing so basically give the finger to all MGS fans. Sure the games may be good, but most fans would rather have 5 more Metal Gear Solid games as Solid Snake, than this convoluted mess of a story you have concocted. A lot of MGS diehards and probably thinking to themselves, "hey those games were great", maybe they were. I don't care, I wanted to play as Solid Snake, not Raiden and not Naked Snaked. Solid Snake bitch! That's where it's at.

3) Making Super Mario Sunshine about cleaning!

A lot of people claim Mario 64 on the N64 changed platform gaming as we know it, and yes I have played it on occasion and enjoyed it, but it didn't rock my world. It was only okay. But when it got levels right, it was fun. Its all about platforming fun, which is what Mario games should be about, be it 2D or 3D. Mario 64 redefined platform gaming in the generations to come because it got all the elements right and to this day people still play it.

It was only a matter of time before a succesor was to follow, but it would follow on the Gamecube years after Mario 64, in what people thought was going to be Mario 128 and turned out to be Mario 64 and a bit.

Mario Sunshine has Mario and Peach and the gang all travel to the wonderful Island Delfino for a holiday but when they arrive they find a monster made of some strange goop on the runway and Mario is given a backpack that acts as a hose to fight the monster and clean the goop off the runway. After this is done, it is revealed that someone posing as Mario is mucking up the island and causing monsters to appear and the people of the Island believe it is Mario. So he is to continue using the hose to clean up the island.

And for the majority of the game you are using the hose to clean goop. You also use it to reach higher platforms but most of the time, cleaning goop up. So Mario's big debut on the Gamecube was about....cleaning? I know Nintendo like to masters at innovation, but that move was just plain retarded. Don't get me wrong, the game isn't bad. Its quite good, but its not a classic Mario game. It feels like an offshoot game because it doesn't feel right. In some levels, you jump througha Portal and right at the start your backpack is stolen and the level is pure platforming and those levels are the most fun in the entire game. In the following months, Nintendo heard back from the fans, we want a game of just these levels.

Now Nintendo needed a strong Mario game, because the Gamecube was the underdog in a 3 way console war, and going up against the PS2 that had the Metal Gear Solid and Devil May Cry series and the Xbox which had Halo, the Gamecube needed a stand out Mario Game and instead got Mario Sunshine, in which you cleaned up stuff. The gamecube never really got a good foothold in the market and only now, throught the Wii are people looking at Gamecube games, thanks to backwards compatibility.

Nintendo learned from their mistake and the next Mario platform game on the home console was Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii and this was truly the next step in Platform gaming. The game rocked and blew everyone away. And honestly it is one of the most fun games I have played on the Wii.

So that is a hint for the future Nintendo, when your making your next Mario game and you think of something innovative, put it through some focus groups first, because Mario Sunshine was a HUGE mistake.

2) Having the follow up to Kingdom Hearts on the GBA

Ever heard of Kingdom Hearts? Of course you have. Kindgom Hearts is the game that melded Final Fantasy with Disney and was a concept everyone shit on, even me. A game in which Disney and the characters of Final Fantasy meet? That's a recipe for disaster, it couldn't work, could it?

Hell yeah! Kindom Hearts is a giant slice of awesoness, and had you taking control of Sora as he venutres to different worlds to rescue his friends Riku and Kairi. During his quest he teams up with Donald Duck and Goofy and fights along side them. Again this all sounds horrible but in execution and wonderful story telling it is great, Donald and Goofy are on the search for King Mickey who has gone missing to. The plot revolves around a group of beings called the Heartless, they want to steal peoples hearts and are led by Disney villian Malificent. You travel from world to world, but really you travelling from movie to movie. There is Alice in Wonderland, Tarzan, Aladdin, Pinnochio (well Monstro the wale), Peter Pan and more. The game was well recieved and well loved, but it ended in a bit of head scratcher and we knew more was to come.

So if you waited until Kindom Hearts 2 and played through the first 3 or 4 hours you are still confused because things are in motion that didn't happen in the first game, in fact your not sure what is going on at all. Well the reason for this is because the true sequel to the game is called Chain Of Memories and was released on the Game Boy Advance. It fills in the gaps between the 2 games and is actually pretty damn important considering how much of the story is filled in.

Released it on the GBA was a huge mistake because most of the fans of the game would not have heard of Chain Of Memories, it was not marketed well and most fans wouldn't even have a GBA to begin with. I can see some of the reasons behind it, it introduced a new card based battle system and certainly was suited in some places for a handheld format, but that is because it was designed as such. It left in its wake people who had followed a story in one game on one platform confused about why the supposed sequel to the game made no sense, then Square where like "oh no, I know we called this game Kindom Hearts 2, but its more like Kindom Hearts 2.5, you need to play Chain of Memories first".

Imagine watching The Fellowship Of The Ring, then 2 years later the Return Of The King is cinemas and everyone is like, what the fuck? There's a huge chunk missing, why is Gandalf pimped out in white clothes? What are the walking tress? This messed up. But Peter Jackson says, "dudes, we released Two Towers on DVD, you need to go buy that before you watch this film, duh!".

This really annoyed me and I eventually got the GBA version but to actually play the game, I found myself distracted, and I think it was because it wasn't on the PS2. Well Square rectified this mistake and have made the PS2 version of Chain of Memories, titled Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain Of Memories. However there is no real stance on a EU release of this game, it looks like Japan and USA only. So to play this on the PS2 it looks like import only.

1) Making every game into a motherfucking trilogy!

Nowadays when a game comes out, we are set into a routine of if it is good, a follow up will come out sooner or later. Its just taken as fact, Splinter Cell did really well so we have had a series built off the back of that.

Now an even more worrying trend is of Video Games being trilogies. A game comes out and when the game ends abrubtly with no real ending, we look to the maker of they game and they shrug their shoulders and say "it's a trilogy, bitch!". Assassin's Creed, Too Human, Halo, Bioshock, Mass Effect, they are all in the trilogy department now.

And we all know who to blame for this: GEORGE FUCKING LUCAS!

Yes that bearded bastard is the one to pin this on, because ever since he released the Star Wars Trilogy all those years ago, every child who grew up on them and now makes games has decided that they need to be like Lucas and create an "epic trilogy" to rival that of Star Wars.

Newsflash: NO YOU DON'T! If you have a story that is too big to tell in one game, make it to two, because you will run out of steam before the end and the third game will just be terrible and way too short (yes Halo 3, we're looking at you). Also do not announce a game is a part of a trilogy before the first part is even out, because god knows what will happen if the first part is shit and no one buys it (yes Too Human, we're looking at you now). Make a first game that tells a story on its own (Halo) and then decide if it is worth expaning the plot into a trilogy. The same can be said of Star Wars: A New Hope, on its own its a self contained plot that COULD and DOES lead to sequel, but had it been a flop, it could have remained as one film.

I made that choice number one because it is the one that bugs me most of all, you want to tell an epic story, good for you but don't do it at the expense of the gameplay or at the expense of someone investing the time at the end for it to have no real ending (ahem Assassin's Creed) and then expect us to wait until you churn out the second part because you have a "vision".

Well that's all for me on this post, this one was quite difficult to write to enjoy.