Games That "Lie", Annoying Game Mechanics

[Puddingman]

I wanna start a thread about game mechanics that totally glitch and mess you up. The kinds of games where you couldn't just execute an action, but you also had to anticipate a malfunction. Some examples I'm thinking of:

Metal Gear Solid- When choking a guard, sometimes I'd get too close to him and it would activate the Alert phase...even though I had the guard subdued and he didn't see me.

Spoiler for Metal Gear Solid Boss Spoiler:

When playing the Ninja boss and he'd say, "Fight like a real warrior, hand to hand combat" and then run and slash me with his sword. I only saw him do that once, but it was so freaking cheap, taking away 3/4 of my health. Cmon man, you just said no weapons!

Tenchu Series- Alerting a ninja foe and while running away, the same ninja foe would re-spot you, again and again, triggering the alert phase many times, even though he still only saw you the same one time.

What experiences have y'all had?

[Vexx]

The *oldest* instance I can think of was way back in 1982... an Othello game that ran on Perkin-Elmer 8/32 systems. (Othello is a Go variant - simple)
One late night while waiting for a compile to finish, we figured out the game cheated. It would flip stones illegally

As for annoying game mechanics... I have a long list of 'user interface' mechanics obviously designed by malcontents --- unintuitive, unnecessary extra clicks, controls that actually collide in function, console ported games that punish players who dare to want a keyboard, etc

[com_gwp]

Originally Posted by Puddingman

Metal Gear Solid- When choking a guard, sometimes I'd get too close to him and it would activate the Alert phase...even though I had the guard subdued and he didn't see me.

Since you mentioned MGS, let me add another one - the hostage hold in MGS3. Press too hard and you kill, press too lightly and you let go, and it was ridiculously hard to maintain the right pressure on the button. Not exactly a glitch, but damn, that was annoying

[Xacual]

I think the main thing I hate is in platformers when you have this really forced camera view you can't adjust. It can be one of the most annoying things ever to have to deal with.

[hyl]

"The cake is a lie"

Seriously though, i hated the enemy AI in SWAT4. You have to yell "freeze!" first and let the enemy try to drop their weapons, sometimes they will and sometimes they fake out by pretending to lower their weapons and immediately after that they start shooting. You are not allowed to shoot them first or else it's considered unauthorized killing and your points will get deducted. If you don't get enough points (depending on difficulty level), then your mission will fail.
I shoud also mention that your character can die from a few bullits, so they can easily kill you in 1 salvo if they don't drop their weapons.

edit:
Instead of an actual bug/glitch i would call it broken game mechanics though.

[Tong]

Any boss/game that can read your inputs an retaliate accordingly.

[RWBladewing]

There's 2 main ones I can think of. One comes from a mostly-unknown game for original Xbox called Breakdown. To use a health restoring food item, you had to bend over to pick it up, then unwrap it, then push a button multiple times to take several bites of it. The game called this "realistic". I called it an extremely annoying waste of time.

And the other, far worse, this one annoys me so much it practically killed an entire genre for me. The current trend in JRPGs of requiring you to perform a series of really obscure actions at very specific times that are easily missable just to get a satisfying conclusion to the story. I have even played a couple games where you actually outright get the bad ending if you don't do this. How anyone even sees half the endings in these games without a guide is beyond me. I prefer games where you can see the story by playing the game instead of having to go out of your way to try every possible action at every possible time.

[Ryonea]

In stealth games, especially when they have an option of "no-kill" policy (and have some kind of ranking system based on the number of people we KO-ed/killed).

Let's say that we just knocked an opponent unconscious, but then the body was caught in an explosion done by another opponent or drowned into water, or something else, it'll count into our kill numbers this is sometimes frustrating since we need to take care of the bodies o our victims to make sure they're safe

MGS4, and Deus Ex series are the ones I have experienced this with.

[Puddingman]

Seems like a lot of these happen in stealth, shooting, or secret agent games. I can't think of these happening in RPG's at all, but maybe people have some ideas.

Another one I was thinking of with MGS (been playing it lately)

Spoiler for End Boss Battle:

When landing the final blow to Rex (1st fight) the screen goes white. but its missiles can still damage you, pretty cheap.

Ugh yea, the MGS3 choke system for sure. I was able to get the hang of it but it took a loooong time.

[Kyero Fox]

I Dragon in skyrim slamming its tail, hitting you even tho you've already stepped away?

[risingstar3110]

In Morrowind (for those who do not knows, it's earlier game in Skyrim's franchise) ,one of the most annoying' spell/ debuff from enemy is (yes, you know what is that), strength reduction. Normally it just reduced few melee damage. The problem is, strength dictate your carrying capacity, and if you carry more than what you can, your running speed is reduced down to walking

And since like most adventurer of the Elder Scroll series, we always carry close to our capacity. Making the debuff/ spell deadly on us, as we became target for enemy bombard destruction spell. However since most enemy do not carry anything with them, the spell is useless unless it's used against us

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

Card games, and the way they 'cheat'. Horribly noticeable in Magic: The Gathering. The AI knows what cards you have and seems to counter before you can play them, or, it just flat out gets the best cards in the deck leaving you with no recourse and doesn't even bother with a game and instead opting for a jail house beatdown.

[Cosmic Eagle]

Originally Posted by risingstar3110

In Morrowind (for those who do not knows, it's earlier game in Skyrim's franchise) ,one of the most annoying' spell/ debuff from enemy is (yes, you know what is that), strength reduction. Normally it just reduced few melee damage. The problem is, strength dictate your carrying capacity, and if you carry more than what you can, your running speed is reduced down to walking

And since like most adventurer of the Elder Scroll series, we always carry close to our capacity. Making the debuff/ spell deadly on us, as we became target for enemy bombard destruction spell. However since most enemy do not carry anything with them, the spell is useless unless it's used against us

It's similar in Neverwinter....

[Kyero Fox]

In White Knight Chronicles its possible to literally miss the broad side of a barn OR GET BLOCKED!

[Puddingman]

I also remember, while I was playing Samurai Legend Musashi, there were a few bosses with really cheap moves; moves that were close to impossible for me to dodge or run away from.

I remember one boss, the Jungle boss (Spider thing, I forget the name) dropped these spike balls that would follow you around. If you weren't above them on the platform they'd continually run you over, you couldn't dodge them on the ground. Of course, I found out you could destroy them with your sword, but that was found out by complete accident: they looked like other things in the game that were indestructible.

Also, I think some of the Resident Evil/Tomb Raider/Exploration and Puzzle games can be misleading/lie sometimes. I know there are plenty of times when I get stuck on a puzzle only to accidentally stumble upon the answer and go, "Oh, it was THAT thing??" Sometimes the clues (insert item A into space A type things) don't stand out too well graphically and I overlook them.

[Kaioshin Sama]

Originally Posted by Mr Hat and Clogs

Card games, and the way they 'cheat'. Horribly noticeable in Magic: The Gathering. The AI knows what cards you have and seems to counter before you can play them, or, it just flat out gets the best cards in the deck leaving you with no recourse and doesn't even bother with a game and instead opting for a jail house beatdown.

That's a pretty common problem across all TCG, but I think it's more that their decks are always built with 4 of each card and well made while you are forced to deal with having to draw card by card from a randomly shuffled deck. It's even worse when the number of cards you have available to chose from is limited by a game mechanic such that most battles boil down to hoping you get a good sets of draws in the first three turns and that the opponent gets tied up long enough for you to get a head start so that when it turns into a battle of attrition you have room to work with.

This happened to me VERY frequently in Marvel Trading Card game beyond the first chapter where it took me like 30 tries just to get past Pyro cause he kept getting The Blob which blocks all damage to cards behind it and has a really high defensive check to beat. Once I finally beat Pyro I got stuck on Avalanche with the same problem and was just never able to beat him. One time I got to a point where I literally needed one more hit to beat him and then the game locked up (a first for me for a DS game) so I assumed that this game really just didn't want me to beat it fair and square and switched to using other means.

I'll go ahead and cite the Supply Lines mission from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas which basically killed my interest in the GTA games since it was just one broken ass almost impossible mission to many for me from that series. This was the worst though. Basically the scenario involves you using an RC Baron plane to try and bomb three vans throughout the San Fierro area that are supplying the toy guys rival or something. This mission really shouldn't be that hard, it's only a matter of flying a plane, not blowing yourself up and getting to your targets, however the part that totally breaks this mission and made it almost legendary as the hardest GTA mission of all time is the fuel limit. For whatever reason they just did not give you enough fuel to complete the mission (lack of play testing) unless all of the courier vans spawn in very specific areas and you fly the mission absolutely perfectly along a very specific route with zero deviation (even a slight curve to the left and back to the right can spell doom) you simply will not have enough fuel to get to all three vans and fly the plane back again. From what I recall many people just could not beat this mission during it's heyday and the ones that did admitted that it came down to luck of the spawn and hours and hours of practice.

From what I've heard they fixed the mission for the PC port so that it's actually mostly possible to do it now, but man that was ugly and on top of all the other myriad of gameplay glitches I think it's safe to say that GTA: San Andreas is the all time champ for this. You could probably devote this entire topic to stories from that game and go a hundred pages.

After that you could probably devote another hundred pages to discussing old school SNK fighters for the Neo Geo like Art of Fighting where the computer noticeably reads you inputs (especially the bosses), limits your ability to use special attacks via a poorly conceived energy system and just plane controls like a truck moving through a wave of molasses heading the other direction.

[Rising Dragon]

Lord, I remember that GTA mission. From what I understand, the thing was made so impossible because of a bug; fuel's not supposed to decrease unless you're accelerating or something, but the bug makes it so it constantly decreases regardless of what you're doing.

Horrid, horrid mission.

[Kaioshin Sama]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

Lord, I remember that GTA mission. From what I understand, the thing was made so impossible because of a bug; fuel's not supposed to decrease unless you're accelerating or something, but the bug makes it so it constantly decreases regardless of what you're doing.

Horrid, horrid mission.

That might have actually been what they fixed. It could certainly make a huge difference since then it functions as an actual fuel gauge instead of just a straight up time limit. That franchise is riddled with oversights like that though. Again it's the main reason I stopped playing them. Apparently it's improved with the new generation of games though from what some reasonably trustworthy sources of mine are saying. I would assume there's a new development team involved or something, or maybe those games should just never have been on the PS2 in the first place. San Andreas just barely ran properly on the PS2, constantly suffered frame rate issues whenever I was driving near top speed and just had other weird things like textures and even objects just plain failing to load. One time I actually exited the gym in your home area of Ganton and the entire city just failed to load such that my character just stepped off a set of stairs and started falling and falling through this grey void for like 45 seconds before the city finally loaded and I hit the ground while taking light fall damage.

[RWBladewing]

Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama

That's a pretty common problem across all TCG, but I think it's more that their decks are always built with 4 of each card and well made while you are forced to deal with having to draw card by card from a randomly shuffled deck. It's even worse when the number of cards you have available to chose from is limited by a game mechanic such that most battles boil down to hoping you get a good sets of draws in the first three turns and that the opponent gets tied up long enough for you to get a head start so that when it turns into a battle of attrition you have room to work with.

This happened to me VERY frequently in Marvel Trading Card game beyond the first chapter where it took me like 30 tries just to get past Pyro cause he kept getting The Blob which blocks all damage to cards behind it and has a really high defensive check to beat. Once I finally beat Pyro I got stuck on Avalanche with the same problem and was just never able to beat him. One time I got to a point where I literally needed one more hit to beat him and then the game locked up (a first for me for a DS game) so I assumed that this game really just didn't want me to beat it fair and square and switched to using other means.

They mostly averted this in the MtG: Duels of the Planeswalkers series, as opponents use the same decks you have access to. Then they had to go and make boss characters with their own unique decks, which contain multiple copies of cards that are actually on the restricted list (only one copy per deck) of the real game and are not obtainable in any way for use in your decks. There it comes right back down to hoping they get a bad draw (not likely since those restricted cards expressly make bad draws better).

I've noticed a few AI issues when the AI player is on your team as well, such as letting themselves die instead of blocking with a creature or refusing to attack with a creature when there is no downside to attacking and no benefit to not attacking. I call sabotage.

[Rising Dragon]

Originally Posted by Kaioshin Sama

That might have actually been what they fixed. It could certainly make a huge difference since then it functions as an actual fuel gauge instead of just a straight up time limit. That franchise is riddled with oversights like that though. Again it's the main reason I stopped playing them. Apparently it's improved with the new generation of games though from what some reasonably trustworthy sources of mine are saying. I would assume there's a new development team involved or something, or maybe those games should just never have been on the PS2 in the first place. San Andreas just barely ran properly on the PS2, constantly suffered frame rate issues whenever I was driving near top speed and just had other weird things like textures and even objects just plain failing to load. One time I actually exited the gym in your home area of Ganton and the entire city just failed to load such that my character just stepped off a set of stairs and started falling and falling through this grey void for like 45 seconds before the city finally loaded and I hit the ground while taking light fall damage.

Beyond that particular mission I never had much trouble with the PS2 version of San Andreas. I'm having more troubles with the PC version of GTAIV, which wouldn't load the world the first and so far only time I loaded it (mostly stress-testing my graphics card at the time).