You know what annoys me with game companies.

[Random_Spock]

One thing I've noticed... way too small font and the font color being too grey in some games. Destiny and Tekken Revolution are two I can think of along with Dragon Age: Inquisition. Can hardly play them due to that. Heard of some people running into the same issue and they have HD tvs.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

HDTV isn't very friendly with games and stuff like fonts.

Try running Steam on a HDTV and you'll hardly be able to read some of the text if you use the regular steam interface and not the terrible "Big Picture" interface which they created for HDTV screens. It's just horrible.

 

[Random_Spock]

HDTV isn't very friendly with games and stuff like fonts.

Try running Steam on a HDTV and you'll hardly be able to read some of the text if you use the regular steam interface and not the terrible "Big Picture" interface which they created for HDTV screens. It's just horrible.

Yea but so many people have said 'get a HDTV and you won't run into that problem...' Wrong. It still happens.

Ended up printing up the controls for both Dragon Age: Inquisition and Destiny just so I can play through them.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I have the Dragon Age Origins Ultimate Edition and it's gorgeous and lovely graphics and includes every single bit of DLC in the one pack, but honestly after a few days of play I just dropped it. It wasn't my cup of tea.

 

[Lookingglassman]

I hate how there are no more cheat codes.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I hate how there are no more cheat codes.

I miss the old command line cheat codes you got by hitting the tilde key.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Ahh, you mean the console? For the most part, it can still be accessed, but they have you enable it via configuration file these days, sometimes enabling a developer mode.

The most obnoxious game I've had to deal with to enable it was with Divinity 2, a quite hellishly difficult game. The regular game never had a developer mode, but the remastered version aka the Developer's Cut added a development mode as a separate executable. Problem being that the save files weren't completely backwards compatible with the base game and using certain codes could corrupt the save files. Yeah, imagine losing hours of progress due to randomly using a code. There were certain codes that were certain to do things though, so at least you knew to avoid them. Also, the dev mode didn't use full acceleration like the base game and was extremely slow.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Ahh, you mean the console? For the most part, it can still be accessed, but they have you enable it via configuration file these days, sometimes enabling a developer mode.

The most obnoxious game I've had to deal with to enable it was with Divinity 2, a quite hellishly difficult game. The regular game never had a developer mode, but the remastered version aka the Developer's Cut added a development mode as a separate executable. Problem being that the save files weren't completely backwards compatible with the base game and using certain codes could corrupt the save files. Yeah, imagine losing hours of progress due to randomly using a code. There were certain codes that were certain to do things though, so at least you knew to avoid them. Also, the dev mode didn't use full acceleration like the base game and was extremely slow.

Yeah that can be a pain when they do that. Dead Island used to have a dev mode but they removed it, but if you change a few filenames from one of the archives inside the game you can get it back. But it shouldn't be like that.

 

[Random_Spock]

I hate how there are no more cheat codes.

Yea I remember those! Especially via Game Genie. Had a blast with that back in the day on my Game Boy. Luckily Nintendo/Game Freak kept the old glitches in Pokemon Red, Blue and Yellow via eshop. Just got my Mew via one last night. Well worth the effort.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

In the 80s the only consoles I had was a Sega Master system and Genesis. Both of them had a special cartridge I purchased that let you cheat in games via codes put into memory addresses.

 

[Random_Spock]

In the 80s the only consoles I had was a Sega Master system and Genesis. Both of them had a special cartridge I purchased that let you cheat in games via codes put into memory addresses.

Cool! I got to use my friend's Genesis to play Sonic on. Miss that thing. It was pretty neat.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I think it was the Game Genie for both Master System and Genesis. You put that in the cartridge slot, then the game cartridge on top of that. You then had a list of codes in a book you put in and that enabled all kinds of cheats or you could use the cartridge to find the cheats yourself by playing and dying. That's how it worked out what memory address to change.

 

[Rincewiend]

Plenty of modern console games have cheatcodes, just not as much. Just check http://www.gamefaqs.com/
And on the PC you can use http://cheatengine.org/

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Plenty of modern console games have cheatcodes, just not as much. Just check http://www.gamefaqs.com/
And on the PC you can use http://cheatengine.org/

Cheatengine Ugh. I can never get that thing to work right and hate looking through ascii or hex.

 

[DBR]

One thing I've noticed... way too small font and the font color being too grey in some games. Destiny and Tekken Revolution are two I can think of along with Dragon Age: Inquisition. Can hardly play them due to that. Heard of some people running into the same issue and they have HD tvs.

I thought this was just me and my shitty vision, so that's . . . something. Skyrim is the most recent example I can think of: couldn't even read the text on a 55" TV sitting ~six feet away - and there was a lot of text. I abandoned it altogether.

 

[John Clark]

Cheatengine Ugh. I can never get that thing to work right and hate looking through ascii or hex.

I don't have the greatest amount of practice either though I've found the tables for it I need to use from time to time. I think one of them severely screwed up a couple of saved games though

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I don't have the greatest amount of practice either though I've found the tables for it I need to use from time to time. I think one of them severely screwed up a couple of saved games though

There's another one called MegaTrainers Experience. Not sure how it works. I think similar to Cheatengine.

 

[Random_Spock]

I thought this was just me and my shitty vision, so that's . . . something. Skyrim is the most recent example I can think of: couldn't even read the text on a 55" TV sitting ~six feet away - and there was a lot of text. I abandoned it altogether.

Yea. It's terrible when game companies make the text so small and hard to read. Really? People pay good money to buy your games and this is what you give them? It wouldn't take that much to fix it. Just make the text somewhat larger and for games that use greyish font, change it over to white.

Don't blame ya there.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Yea. It's terrible when game companies make the text so small and hard to read. Really? People pay good money to buy your games and this is what you give them? It wouldn't take that much to fix it. Just make the text somewhat larger and for games that use greyish font, change it over to white.

Don't blame ya there.

Or better yet offer font options to make changes to size and colour. Would that really be that hard?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

The cost of a game relative to inflation was smallest in the PS1/PS2 era probably.

Yeah, I hate the way they are leaving out content they normally would have put in the game so they can force you to pay more. The Catwoman DLC, the Prothean stuff. I think DLC should fall into two categories.

1) Fully formed additional content that adds to the original game, it does not complete the original game. Like a side story or short post-game episode that does NOT take place during the main story and does NOT give you advantages during the main story. Extra content with the same characters that stands on its own.
2) Extra costume stuff. I don't give a crap about this kind of thing but if other people want to give the company making games I like a source of almost pure profit that doesn't come out of my wallet because they think the character looks cute in a bunny costume, fine by me. This should be purely superficial.

The other big thing that pisses me off about game companies now is that most games tend to be very streamlined and dumbed down. Games are designed so you move steadily through the story with no real roadblocks or challenge. They don't care about the kind of challenge NES era games had, they want the slow consistent endorphin release that keeps you addicted but doesn't quite leave you satisfied. If they do have anything hard they'll either offer to or automatically make it easier if you fail a few times.

Yeah, they might have insane hard modes. But all they do is add stat multipliers to the normal games. They make the entire game equally insanely hard, when what they should be doing is making games start out really easy, end up really hard, but you gradually learn how to play the game as you go along and get better.

Japanese RPGs have all but given up having mazes or puzzles in dungeons, instead opting for the 'Straight walk with branches for treasure chests'.

What they do in recent Mario games is pretty obnoxious. They actually put a few hard levels in the game. But to unlock them, you have to search every random corner of all the easy levels and collect everything. There's no good reason at all unlocking the hardest levels should be tied to star coins.