That door is blocked. Go around. That window is invincible. Go around. That drywall is....

This blog is all about good and bad game decisions.

It constantly boggles my mind why game designers decide to do something a certain way, or add certain "features" to their games which does nothing but make playing them a miserable experience.

This blog isn't so much about whether a game is good or bad, but how it could have been better and what it did really well. So let's start with a few examples from an easy one: Assassins Creed.

For the record AC is a fairly good game, but some of these things are just so annoying I can't understand why anyone would have thought they were a good thing.

WTF #1 : Loading Loads a Loading Screen for Loading the Game

For the love of God why? When you start Assassins Creed you load into an interface whose only real purpose is to load the game. This is just twice as annoying as a regular loading screen.

A simple solution would have been to provide 3 options on the main screen:
New Game
Continue
Continue (for real this time)

I wonder how many people would willingly load into the Animus ( *cough* Matrix *cough* ) first if they had the option to skip it. My guess is almost everyone would skip it (seeing as how you can access the Animus from Select and Start anyway...).

WTF #2 : Forced Camera/Player Lock When Freedom Needed Most

This one is mind boggling. Whenever you save someone, or go to assassinate someone, instead of trying to save your own hide, or get into a good position you are completely mesmerized by by some idiotic thing and are unable to move effectively, look away, or protect yourself.

WTF #3 : Blinding the Player as a Reward

A game should never reward you for doing something well by poking you in the eye. There are countless times when you pull off some awesome feat in AC and are in the midst of trying to sneak away or survive when the screen blooms into brightness and crazy shit flashes all over the screen.

Add the slow mo, camera lock, and guards who will kill you (but only you) for absolutely anything and come up with any formula that does not equal fun. Why?

WTF #4 : Flag Collecting / Flying Through Rings

Ok, I really don't know a single person who has ever said to me that they enjoyed collecting flags in a game. AC is chock full of this nonsense. Even better, you often have to do this while on a timer, dodging guards and idiot citizens. Not fun.

What makes this especially not fun, is you have to comb every inch of every area in the game while constantly contending with WTF 5.

WTF #5 : Infinite Guards Covering up Some Other Deficiency

Ok, there's an infinite amount of guards and no matter how many are killed, there will always be more. This is annoying because you can't control an area, even for 10 minutes while you get something done. Unfortunately they kind of had to do this because there's nothing remotely covert, stealthy, or assassin-y about Altair.

It's just stupid, annoying, and ruins the experience.