Okay, so it might be a bit of a tall order to ask for a perfect video game, one without glitches and errors, but developers are still making some of the biggest and most obvious blunders easily quashed from existence like smallpox. It goes without saying that developers are obviously too focused on making something new rather than fixing the old, and this list is here as a grim reminder that, though new material is cool, a house will not stand well on a corrupt base. That said, here are the five biggest mistakes developers insist on making.
The Never Ending Quest
For some reason, every role-playing game seems to have at least one of these. This scenario is where you have already embarked on your journey to do whatever, slay X amount of rats or something, you’ve completed the quest with minimal scarring, but for some unknown reason the person you are talking to refuses to acknowledge that you have even slain one pesky rodent. You then spend the next seven hours killing all of the population of rats from east to west but you still can’t collect the tantalizing reward of a few gold pieces. You would think a developer would test all their quests a few times to make sure every rat you kill is a rat and not a giant spider in disguise.
Tight Squeezes You Can’t Escape
Many adventurers decide that their time is best spent romping about the rocks and boulders, but joy turns to horror as they realize they have become stuck between a rock and a hard place…literally! Perhaps it’s the design team’s way of saying, “Look how realistic our game is! You can actually get caught in the rocks and never be free again, just like in real life!” Or perhaps they are sitting at their desks, cackling as they watch hundreds of people shed tears for their lost character as they thus begin to start anew. Whatever is going on, the little deadly spaces no one sees until it’s too late are reoccurring in most free-roam games.
Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Die
Though the situation with such a phenomenon is dwindling, there are still a select number of games where your miniature pixilated friend just isn’t aware enough to know there is a horde of angry zombies behind him. You know, until it’s too late. Mostly appearing in the First Person Shooter genre, it would be nice to add that one mystical branch everyone seems to step on in the movies to tip the other person (you) off that they’re being followed. Sometimes it’s just hard getting stabbed in the back by your friends, enemies, and people you didn’t even know existed.
I Can’t See My Feet
Most games that take place first-person nowadays show your arms and whatever you are holding, but few show your feet when you look down. Are you only an upper half which floats atop the air? Are you half cloaked? Did the animators get lazy and give up on your legs? The answer is hidden somewhere alongside other of life’s greatest mysteries like “Where did that come from?” and “Is this really safe to eat?” As the great and ominous voice once said in reference to a lollipop, “The world may never know.”
Sleep and Food Is for Chumps
Think about it, it must be pretty hard on your characters not getting a good night’s rest without worrying about your town burning to the ground or being visited by an assassin. Not to mention the lack of food substituted with liquids made of newt’s eye and giant’s toe. The life of a video game character is nothing like that of the average man, no matter how much the developers claim it to be. The only genre that gets these kinds of matters right almost infallibly is the Simulator genre, with games such as The Sims. Why can’t cowboys, mages, and starship captains live life like everyone else does? Until that question has been answered, they shall continue their strictly-potion diet and pray that one day they can eat a wide variety of foods in lieu of nasty potions dropped from who-knows-what’s.
Don’t be fooled, the video game industry is thriving in what appears to be its “Golden Age,” but these few embarrassments do put a nice dent in a gamer’s happiness. If video game developers would stop focusing on the future and fix what they missed prior games would probably be a lot better. Who knows, these could be the last things needed to create the legendary “Perfect Game.”
If only these practices are avoided, then it is guaranteed that you can enjoy a perfect game without any issues like pokemon series for example where you only need to have a Pokemon go accounts but the developers need to keep the customers’ interest in mind.
Jane Castro is a journalist and media enthusiast. She graduated from the University of Bacolod in the Philippines. She loves skating, scuba diving, and archery on her free time.