Video Games/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


MOD: The examples for individual games listed here need to be moved - not copied - to Headscratchers subpages of the matching works, and the category Category:Video Games/Headscratchers needs to be confirmed to be present on all of those subpages.

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  • I don't like the fact that the majority of FPS players in online multiplayer don't use their headsets. This makes it pretty awkward for when you try to use teamwork, either in games where it's largely irrelevant or even ones where it is actively encouraged. What the hell!? Are people just too lazy to fix or replace their mics, or are they so anti-social that they don't even want to interact with any other players? Don't you just hate it when the users of a product prevent you from using it as intended?
    • When you speak with a headset and are told "shut up" because they find your voice is annoying, that generally tends to kill any desire to want to speak.
      • In Modern Warfare 2 I made an attempt to communicate with my team, and I was called a 'fat kid' for my effort. I'm not a kid by any stretch of the imagination, and I am relatively in-shape. That kinda killed my desire to communicate with the Xbox Live people.
    • Anyone trying to conceal their age or gender would be revealed instantly if their voice was heard. And if you're a woman playing on Xbox Live, you DO want to conceal your gender.
    • A lot of people find headsets incredibly uncomfortable, to the point of being a constant distraction.
    • In some games, like World of Warcraft, there are guilds and playgroups that require headsets for all members. If your game doesn't allow players to set rules like that, lobby for it to be added in the next release.
  • Why is it call "Video Games?", Video Games have nothing to do with the Video itself, so why are they called Video Games?
    • Well, they would be pretty useless without a "video screen," wouldn't they?
      • Mmm... All right... So Why isn't it call "TV Games?"
        • If I'm not mistaken at least some early ones were.
        • Japan also calls videogames, "TV Games."
        • Because people use video tapes all the time. And not all games are played on the television. And the home console came into existence after the arcade box.
        • Bonus points for the above statement: some of the earlier consoles (including those in Japan) actually used video tapes to hold the data for games. Then there's the wonderfully outdatedslang term "game tapes."
        • Some video games are played on monitors, not on TV screens.
    • It's things moving around on a screen. It's just easier, probably to think of it as a video of some sort.
    • They used to get called "computer games" for the longest of times but that seems to have died out now.
      • That's technically inaccurate too, since some early videogames (like Pong TV units) weren't true computers.
        • Pong (even the original) was certainly a computer; it just wasn't a general-purpose one. And it may not have been a digital one. But a non-programmable analog computer is still a computer.
    • Why? Look above. Its to differentiate them from card games and board games. Considering that these games required the use of some form of video display, the name was pretty apt.
      • On top of that, some board games don't even have a board, the most notable ones being Twister, Yahtzee, Apples to Apples, and Puerto Rico. However, their gameplay and their rules follow normal board game conventions (minus the pieces, moving, and board) and are sold with other board games.
    • Because English's status as a living language without any official or effective authority (outside of individual organizations) allows for the compounding of words based on individual preference, apparently prevalent enough to combine 'videogame' and (despite what you think) 'boardgame'. 'Playinggame', however, isn't aesthetically pleasing due in part to the clashing letters. Why do you say 'tomorrow' instead of 'to the morrow'? Why do you say "whatever" instead of "what ever"? English is not a language that lends itself to Grammarnazification.
    • Why not "electronic games"?
      • Because that term generally refers to hand-held games. (Not like the Gameboy, but like these)
      • Pretty much no one uses "electronic" and "computer" as synonyms any more, at least not in the US.
    • It has everything to do with the video itself. That's like saying books have nothing to do with paper.
    • The first link I got when I Googled for "video definition" produced "of or pertaining to the production of text or graphics on a video display." It's a valid use of the term.
  • Because the common attribute of Video Games is that they have a major video component, unlike paper-and-pencil Tabletop RPGs, Card Games, or Board Games. Video Games have everything to do with the Video itself.
  • Can we use this Page for Video Games that don't have Just Bugs Me Page Yet?
    • I don't see why not. I also don't see why not just make JBM page for those games though.
    • MOD: Please don't. Instead, please create a WMG subpage for the work.
  • This bugs me massively, considering its one of my favorite games: Dark Cloud 2. Dark Cloud 2 has a gaping Plot Hole that gets bigger the more you look at it. See, in the future, there are areas that are important to the plot. These have had their "origin points" destroyed, meaning they no longer exist. But, everyone in the future knows of these places, even though they don't exist until you recreate them. This is possibly the most confusing use of time ever to grace a plot, and this crap is central to it. It's just such a massive Plot Hole, it's preventing me from enjoying the game!
  • Why has no one made Nintendo Vs. Capcom yet?
    • Knowing Nintendo, they probably turned it down... for now.
  • X-Box Achievements. Why do you get achievements for the simplest things? For instance, in Assassin's Creed II you get an achievement just for sprinting at least 100 meters. Hell, you get an achievement just for starting the game. Why? Shouldn't an achievement, by definition, only come when you've achieved something? As in, something that requires courage, effort, or skill? Why are they throwing achievements out like cheap hotel mints?
    • Probably for the people who whine about some accomplishments being impossible, which is one of my pet peeves. Yeah, sure, almost nobody is going to successfully land a 4320° midair spin off a jump, but if you did happen to, wouldn't it be cool to have a badge pop up on your profile?
    • The way this troper heard it, Microsoft requires games to have a certain number of achievements. Sometimes the developers will grant achievements for trivial things just to reach the quota.
      • Unless they changed the rules, that minimum achievement # isn't very high. Fight Night Round 3 only has 8.
    • Achievements are often given for passing important points in the story, and sometimes there will be a pivotal bit near the beginning that isn't hard to do such as the "be born" one from Assassin's Creed II. Also, ridiculously easy achievements are sometimes used as a joke, such as "Press Start To Play" in The Simpsons (Description: "Easiest. Achievement. Ever.").
    • Achievements in general are This Troper's Just Bugs Me. They confer nothing to the player. It smacks to me of developers just not being bothered to include unlockables half the time, but it's mostly due to the fact that devs are forced to include them by Microsoft and Sony now (even in games where it is blatantly unnecessary and pointless, and then you'll get achievement-whoring players who play specifically to increase their gamerscore. What, have gamers become too shallow to play the game for the sake of enjoying the game, they now need little 'yay go me' incentives to help them along? Rant over.
      • Well... can't they enjoy the game and enjoy doing achievements? There is no structure to this argument here, so I'll just say: 1) achievements are a plausible and easy way to give the game some replay value and/or keep them interested(something like time attack modes, what was that for if not bragging, mostly?). And 2) 90% of the flash games I've ever played I only did to get achievements in Kongregate. Now, some were genuinely fun, some I literally closed as soon as the badges were credited and... there were some in-between. But I don't regret playing most of them, so I don't see why that's a problem.
      • You're correct, of course, but there ARE achievement whores out there, so games with lots of easy achievements have a built-in market. There are some achievements that do have a real point, like the ones in Bioshock for completing the game without using save points; they give you ideas for how to challenge yourself and some kind of tangible proof when you've succeeded. The latter purpose could be better served by unlockables, but not every game studio has the time to come up with them ... and there really isn't much difference between a lame unlockable and an achievement.
    • Executive Meddling - Microsoft requires achievements.
    • Some achievements are done very well. For example, Fallout: New Vegas offers one for each of the four endings, giving extra impetus for multiple playthroughs. Borderlands has the Bragging Rights Reward Achievement "Vincible," awarded for defeating a nigh-impossible Bonus Boss. BioShock (series) has the "Irony" achievement that rewards a little role-play (it's unlocked at the end of a level where an insane artist commands you to kill his enemies and take pictures of their corpses as part of his "masterpiece." The Achievement is unlocked by photographing his corpse). Red Dead Redemption's "Redeemed" Achievement makes 100PercentCompletion feel like an accomplishment. Lastly, "Take Five" from Eat Lead (earned by pausing the game) shows Achievements as yet another mine for pop-culture induced parody.
      • Achievements fulfill the psychology of reward. Not knowing when an achievement pops up rewards players for seemingly random action. Named achievements mark progress and encourage completion. This fits in with rewarding a child for straight A reports or teaching a rat to continue pressing a lever for food rather than reward for each press. This drives competition and encourages continued gameplay.
      • Not to mention that away before the invention of achievements and trophies came into the picture there were a lot of people trying to gain One Hundred Percent Completion on some of their games. It doesn't force you or even require you to do it unlike secret or alternate endings, it's just a Bragging Rights Reward.
      • My theory about achievements is that they're a gamification of statistics collecting. That's why there's often one very early on and periodically during the main quest - they use these to track where players stopped playing and how much they've completed. If there's a section where a significant portion of the playerbase stopped playing, they can use that information to tweak gameplay either in a patch or in future games. Instead of hiding this information from you, they provide it upfront as a bragging rights reward. As well, a certain type of player is inspired by these to get more out of a game than he would have if achievements didn't set goals for him to work toward.
  • I just got through playing the C64 Fahrenheit 451. Not only was it horribly frustrating, with Luck-Based Mission and Guess the Verb everywhere, but the ending...You're playing as Montag, running through New York in order to break into the 42nd Street Library and find Clarisse (who faked her death apparently). The Firemen put the library's books to the torch, but put the contents on microcassettes. Clarisse has stolen the cassettes and has them on her person. OK, you climb up to the roof and are given two ways down. One leads to an escape route out of the city, one leads to a transmitter where you can upload the contents of the cassettes to the Underground. You're supposed to choose the transmitter room, where you're barricaded in, uploading documents with a shit-ton of Firemen and Hounds trying to break down the door. Once the documents are uploaded, the Firemen break through, and turn Montag and Clarisse into Doomed Moral Victors and martyrs for the cause of book-lovers everywhere. Here's the problem - why not escape the city with the loot, hook up with another cell, and then have the Underground score a transmitter?
  • Have you noticed how in many JRPGs when you travel on the overworld and cross the edge of the world map, you appear on the other side? In other words, when you go out of the world map from the left side, you appear on the right side. Likewise when you go out from the upper side you appear on the lower side. If you don't think too much about it, it seems to make sense and to be logical: The world's surface is contiguous so you can travel endlessly in one direction. Now think about it a bit more. Take a world map of the Earth and think how it would work there: If you go out the left edge you would appear on the right edge ok, no problem. The left and right edges are connected. But what happens if you go out the upper edge (iow. the north pole)? Do you appear on the lower edge (ie. the south pole)? No! The upper and lower edges are not connected! (If you go out of the upper edge, you will just appear again on the upper edge, on a different place.) So how exactly does this work on JRPG world maps, again? That's fridge logic for you.
    • (Answer: The only way for it to work like that is if the planet was actually a torus. The only way for a rectangular area to be able to represent the surface of an object such that both pairs of opposing edges are connected is if the object is toroidal. Hence all JRPG planets are toroidal in shape. This raises the question how such oddly-shaped planets can form...)
    • We have a trope for this: Video Game Geography
  • At the end of Sonic Adventure 1 Sonic is a hero, along with his friends for stopping Perfect Chaos from destroying the city, however, in Sonic Adventure 2 he's treated as a criminal by the very same people he saved not too long ago because somebody that looks a bit like him committed the crimes.
    • I don't know, seems too specific a gripe. Unless you're talking about the cliche of how a character can be suddenly seen as a monster by their closest friends for one misunderstanding. That plot device certainly does get old, but I doubt there's much that can be done about it.
  • Developers (Especially newer developers) always thinking in grandiose concepts that more experienced developers have done, and better than "New Development Sudio X's First Game Where You Fight Big Armies". Even if you're working with a HD 3D game that shouldn't mean you over-extend your budget and end up crashing the studio! Why is it always big battles when a small adventure game can get you started with the tech for a fraction of the cost and therefore make easier returns? I understand some studios know this lesson (LittleBigPlanet's Media Molecule for instance), but it should be common sense. Then again I'm not a developer. Thoughts?
    • They are developers, but they are neither businesspeople nor economists. These guys assemble a studio because they have an artistic vision in mind. The problem here is that they have so much ambition, they can't wait to make their dream project. Said dream project is usually grand and will thus cost a lot of money, but they will underestimate development costs and time needed. This oversight results in an unfinished but promising game and a lot of broken dreams.
  • Why[1] would game developers want their games to be played longer, to pad out their games, and the like? Wouldn't it be more lucrative for a customer to pay $60 for a 4-hour game with no replay value whatsoever, so they immediately go out and buy another $60 game, repeat ad nauseum? You'd think RPGs would be less profitable than FPSs, but these days you have all sorts of added stuff to them (Nazi Zombies from one of the Call of Duty games). Wouldn't developers rather remove all that and make players buy the next game?
    • That's assuming they're willing to shell out $60 for a four hour game. Plus, like other forms of niche culture, they have to keep the players playing games habitually. If they play a four hour RPG, beat it, and have to wait a week or two for their next paycheck to get another $60 game, their console's already become a random knicknack below the TV.
    • Because everyone will throw It's Short, So It Sucks on it.
    • Real reason: GameStop. Buying a (console at least) video game anymore is more or less an extended rental. DLC and such can't be resold, since it's locked to a Steam or EA account, and "free" DLC or pre-order bonuses ensure that gamers buy spiffy new shrink-wrapped games instead of crummy old used ones (which, coincidentally, don't provide new royalty checks for the distributor).
    • You can't even sell a twenty-hour JRPG for $60. A lot of JRP Gs have replay value, too, thanks to alternate endings and New Game+ -- I feel cheated if I'm "done with" a $60 game after less than seventy hours total.
  • Achievement. I do have a question - do you think that someone could make a really really Guide Dang It achievement just to be funny?
    • They have. 'Sweet Goodbye' In Mirror's Edge is just obtuse.
  • Why is it when people show off a game that's available only on Play Station 3 and 360, they always show and favor the 360 version?
    • Follow the Leader may apply if the 360 sells more versions or is held by customers more likely to read the review. This is obvious for console specific medium like Sony Network Magazine (or whatever they migth be called).
  • So nowadays (well, for years now) they've stuck a warning about risk of epilepsy episodes when playing games. That's good, light-pattern-triggered epilepsy is a terrible thing. But why only games get that treatment? I saw a warning like that in Shadow of the Colossus HD for the Play Station 3, a game that is not know for blinking lights and sudden light pattern changes. In terms of light intensity, it's tamer than most action movies and animations! How come only games get warning signs?
    • Not sure, but you never know if it'll happen.
      • Yes, better safe than sorry, but why only videogames. We know about light-pattern-triggered epilepsy because (AFAIK) of Pokemon -- the series, not the game. So... again, why only videogames get the warning?
    • Actually it was justified in Space Channel 5 - I mean, look at stage 3. that looks more like the Pokémon seizure event.
  • What bugs me is the excessive use of the word 'ripoff'. As in, 'Game B is just a ripoff of Game A.' Years ago someone said to me, 'Silent Hill is just a ripoff of Resident Evil.' The only thing I can think of that they have in common is that they're both 3rd person survival horror games. So...we can only have one series per genre? Even more improbably, someone once called Beyond Good and Evil a ripoff of Zelda. Despite both games having completely different concepts, gameplay, plot, characters, and setting. Again, the only thing they have in common is that they're both 3rd person adventure games. Why is it when one game overlaps another even in the tiniest way, people call ripoff? Yeah, some games do rip off others, but lets not go off the deep end. If every game were required to be completely original with no traces of similarity to other games at all, there'd be like, 25 games out there.
    • "Ripoff" is basically the number one sign that they haven't actually played it. The term has basically been flanderized to mean :anything with any similarities". And yes, it seems that we're only allowed one-entry per genre. Try making an adventure game about dungeon-crawling where you play as only one character. Now count how many people (and reviews) trash them as being a Zelda ripoff or a Zelda-clone at best. It's happened quite often. And likewise, look at games like Terraria - if you have a Wide Open Sandbox that encourages building, it's instantly trashed and pegged as a ripoff of Minecraft. How come Minecraft is the only Wide Open Sandbox game allowed out there? How come Zelda's the only action-adventure game allowed to exist? And how come we haven't cracked down on other genres of games? (I certainly don't see anyone insisting that Mario is the only platformer allowed, or that Street Fighter is the only fighter allowed to exist.) because people are stupid, that's why. Also, related, Jimquisition's rant on this phenomena, like how people throw "Ripoff" and "Plagirism" around so liberally.
    • Because certain people think it makes them sound smart and knowledgeable to throw around accusations of plagiarism on the flimsiest grounds. Oh, and I actually have heard people refer to fighting games as "Street Fighter ripoffs." (Apparently they'd never heard of Urban Champion, and it's probably an even older concept than that.)
  • A common complaint I hear about any game (especially one in a franchise) is this: It's a good game, just not a good (insert series) game. Metroid, Castlevania, Zelda, and many other games have been subject to this. But it doesn't really tell people anything. I know there are distinct concepts that are usually associated with a certain series i.e. Metroid is usually associated with exploration. But if a franchise deviates from it, does it detract from the game?
    • I think the argument here is that people come to a franchise game with certain expectations, including (but not limited to) gameplay mechanics, storytelling, art style, etc. If a game deviates from these expectations, some people will have a bad reaction because it's not what they were looking for - what if you bought the new Metroid game, expecting large monsters, solitary exploration, environmental puzzles, etc., and it turned out to be a Metroid-themed JRPG? You'd probably evaluate the game based on your unfulfilled expectations, rather than based on its merits as a JRPG. Even if it was a great JRPG, a lot of people would be unhappy with it. If a franchise game is different than its predecessors, or even if it's just not quite as good as them, the review becomes more about failed expectations than about the game's objective merits.
    • There's also the issue of thinking that they're just taking advantage of the name to increase sells, if the new game is so different from theprevious ones, you think it would had been better that it came out as an origianl game instead of a market sequel. That's an issue with the upcoming game DMC and the Devil May Cry series, which is so different that they opted for calling it an alternate universe instead of a prequel when the uproar assaulted.
  • Am I the only one who notices a trend in some multiplayer games? The ones getting the most enjoyment out of it are the ones who don't give two shits about their stats.
    • Which is a shame when you consider games like Battlefield 3, where you're not allowed to use any of the relatively decent guns or gadgets until you've put in roughly 12 hours of gameplay. Up until then? You get to be one of the 80% of players on every server who'll go through an entire match with up to 2 kills under the 4 who have fourty each. I don't get some game devs are still stuck in this mindset of designing their games so only people who've played longer will get to be any good, not those who're actually good at it.
  • It's aggravating when you have to unlock each level in a puzzle game, where there's no concept of story, gradual character growth, or competitive play to justify it. If I'm stuck on puzzle #9 I'd like to be able to move on to #10 and come back to it later. Or maybe puzzles #26-50 are based on a game mechanic I don't enjoy, and I want to skip to #51. This is especially aggravating when a puzzle game's first entire set of puzzles is a tutorial and it still won't let me move on to real puzzles until the tutorial's done.
  • Similarly, games which give you a purely cosmetic character customizer and insist on locking all the parts until you've completed advanced game goals. It kind of ruins the customizer if it starts out crippled and you can only access the parts you want when you're almost done with the game anyway. I could understand wanting players to "earn" a weapon or moveset, but having to "earn" a blue shirt is annoying and underwhelming. At least let me purchase DLC to unlock those pieces.
  • Do gamers actually know what boycotting actually is?
    • Is this about boycotting a specific game/company, or just in general? Also, gamers are nowhere near organized/unified enough to actually make an effective boycott most of the time.
      • I don't know whether or not the scope of the boycott is relevant, but you'd think more of them would understand that boycotting is more "showing opposition by refusing to buy or use the targeted group's products or doing anything else related to the group" and less "using their products but refusing to pay for them".
        • I saw a few tweets about this: "Do you think the Montgomery Bus Boycott would have worked if they instead used it as an excuse to hop on the buses without paying, saying 'we weren't going to use it anyways so you shouldn't bother about lost revenue at all' to justify this?"
  • Am I the only one disturbed by the over-developed sense of entitlement most gamers have, and instead sees Nintendo's shift to the "casual" demographic as a "Well fuck you too"? Developers devote their entire lives to making games and spend years working on games, yet all they get is Nothing but Hates, yet the gamers are surprised that they shift to a demograph that pays, yet actually appreciates the hard work they put in? Come on, game developers do not deserve those kinds of customers...nobody does.
    • Given that the term "entitled" gets thrown around willy-nilly in the gaming community and gamers are often willing to stomach business practices that wouldn't be tolerated in any other market, I think it is just you. Nintendo's shift to a casual demographic was less "fuck you" and more "Money!" since the Gamecube never reached the popularity of the N64 when it went up against the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox, so they just decided to target a much wider demographic in a nearly uncontested market with massively cheaper production costs. Developers might often not deserve the "hate" they get, but at the same time customers don't deserve the treatment given to them by publishers: complex and intrusive DRM, DLC schemes, constantly diminishing content at increasing prices, greater emphasis on multiplayer over singleplayer, and belligerent resistance to the secondhand market at the players' detriment. So while there are players who act "entitled", as in every market, it's folly to assume that everyone who complains about this or that in a game is acting "entitled" when they can very well have serious and reasonable complaints about business practices that negatively impact them.
  • How come the primary interaction in video games is always violence, and games that aren't about violence are usually called "casual"? Only a few puzzle games escaped this. (Tetris mostly.)
    • Most likely because doing the things that you can in Grand Theft Auto in real life would get you put away for a long time, and simulating perfectly ordinary, lawful activities isn't nearly as entertaining.
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  1. ↑ Forgive me if this has already been mentioned -- this page is too huge to read every word.
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