Gaming Gripes

[zero]

Mindless repetition. Let's say I'm stuck on a boss that has multiple forms. Forms 1 and 2 are easy, but I die a few dozen times on Form 3. I fucking loathe having to start from form 1 all over again. And if there's an unskippable cutscene every time? Fuck you and die.

[Quom]

Yeah I fucking hate the price of new games here in Australia anywhere from $99-$119 usually... Especially EB Games... Biggest rip off ever... Hence why I rarely ever get new games these days, and if I do, I usually try and import them, ends up been much cheaper for me...

Not to derail the thread too much, but you do realise that the cost price for retailers is about $80 in Australia don't you? I'm not saying we should buy Australian, all I'm saying is that the distributors/publishers sell the games for that price to the retailers who can't really afford to lose $30 on every game sold.

You can thank our parallel import laws. It's the same thing that is killing off bookshops.

[Ruki]

Mmmm....gaming grapes.

[LUKIE]

Yeah I fucking hate the price of new games here in Australia anywhere from $99-$119 usually... Especially EB Games... Biggest rip off ever... Hence why I rarely ever get new games these days, and if I do, I usually try and import them, ends up been much cheaper for me...

Not to derail the thread too much, but you do realise that the cost price for retailers is about $80 in Australia don't you? I'm not saying we should buy Australian, all I'm saying is that the distributors/publishers sell the games for that price to the retailers who can't really afford to lose $30 on every game sold.

You can thank our parallel import laws. It's the same thing that is killing off bookshops.

Cost price on games is nowhere near that high, and it is EB Games who are price gouging.

Cost for most games stumbles around the 40-50 dollar mark for new releases.

[Quom]

Based on what information? I personally know a guy who tried to set up an Ebay store which failed due to the cost as well as EA stance of needing to order minimum quantities. $75-80 is the price I have heard from him as well as countless retailers.

[LUKIE]

People in the industry who buy bulk. Regular pricing for new release games has come down in major retailers drastically now, where you can walk away with a new game for under 80 bucks. Because EB Games controlled the majority of the market over here, they never deemed to do this.

If 80 bucks was true, then Target, K-Mart, and especially JB HiFi make negative money in their games departments because all of their pricing for new games is around 72-78 dollars.

Of course Steam still wins.

[Quom]

I was talking private retailers. Target et al. Get a discount due to bulk purchases which are then distributed amongst the stores. I still don't think they are getting them below $65-$70 and I wouldn't be surprised if they pay more than this. There is fuck all profit in games in Australia.

[Benji]

Games like Prototype that rely on cheap as fuck mass attack tactics from both the player and the enemies. I'm not a skilled player of games, by any means, but don't make me spend half my time running away to build my health back up for five minutes, only to get about a minutes worth of actual fight time each time.

[Kaney]

Yeah but Prototype was fucking awful.

[Benji]

True. I can't figure out which was a bigger clusterfuck, the gameplay or the story. So much wasted potential

[MalaCloudy Black]

The lack of manuals. I miss the days when I could get a game from the shops and be able to read the manual on the bus ride back. Civ 3/4 was fucking amazing for this, giant books full of stuff. These days? I opened Mortal Kombat and I got...a leaflet.

Somewhere I've got a Classic RPGs boxset - it's got a few of the early Ultima games, the first couple of Bard's Tales, and some others I don't remember off the top of my head - but the manual that came with that was enormous. One of the biggest books I've ever seen...I wonder if I still have it anywhere.

One of the games got around graphical and memory limitations by, when you entered a new area, or when you spoke to a character, just telling you to turn to a certain page in the manual, which would then give you all the flowery descriptions of the room you just walked into, and everything the NPC says to you...it was awkward, but kind of fun. And they were all in a random order in the book, with loads of entries that didn't actually correspond to anything in the game, so you couldn't just read the thing to figure out what you had to do. Good times.

On this tip, I still have the manual that game with Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. I don't have my SNES, I don't have a LoZ: LTTP cartridge, but by god, i still have that manual. Sure, the cover's been torn off, but I've inexplicably hung on to it - probably because it was the first game I ever owned (came packaged with the SNES). I have it right here in a drawer on my computer desk. I still like to pull it out every once in a while and flip through it.

Mindless repetition. Let's say I'm stuck on a boss that has multiple forms. Forms 1 and 2 are easy, but I die a few dozen times on Form 3. I fucking loathe having to start from form 1 all over again. And if there's an unskippable cutscene every time? Fuck you and die.

'sup, Sephiroth. Urg.

EDIT: Oh, and I'll echo cheap boss fights. Shao Kahn in MK9 and Goro are the fucking worst for this. Even on the most simple difficulty against Shao Kahn, I have to resort to running away, spamming range attacks, ad infinitum. And Goro is the same way, but he and Kintaro both spam this ONE MOVE that's damn near impossible to avoid. It's not fun, it's just frustrating and stupid.

[lanky316]

I miss the big boxed PC games because of the manual thing. I remember once upon a time if I bought a game I could open up that box and see a book and how I couldn't wait to read that. Sometimes I'd have an Amiga/PC game and not touch it for a couple of hours while skimming the read. Remember some of the flight games manuals practically had enough extra gubbins to teach you how to fly the real thing!

[Skummy]

Yeah, I miss manuals you can kill time reading through all the random, extraneous nonsense in there. Civilisation II had a pretty epic one too, I think...plenty of the old PC games I used to play had some epic ones.

I miss enormous and impractical PC boxes too, and I don't know why.

[Skummy]

I miss them so much I said it twice.

[Benji]

I will never understand games with manuals on disk. Do they really expect you to flip through windows whilst playing?

[Guest JukeboxHero]

I wish more games were like Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

I, too, miss manuals. They always gave something good to read on the trip home from the shop.

[METALMAN]

First Age of Empires manual was brilliant. I still have it. It even had a fairly detailed history of every civilisation on the game, complete with maps and all sorts of extraneous nonsence, such as the history of every unit in the game. Brilliant.

[OctoberRaven]

I, too, miss manuals. They always gave something good to read on the trip home from the shop.

This. When I saw Fallout 3 had a huge ass manual it was like I was a kid with the Super Mario World manual again.

[KevinStorm]

I remember an old PC game called Pharaoh that had a pretty big manual. I think Civ3 is still the biggest manual I've ever seen.