Best examples of "What were they thinking?!" in gaming

[AlphaRuby]

The topic says it all. What moment (whether in a game itself or decisions made by the makers) made you want to scream "What the hell?!"

 

Mine is the "gritty & realistic" re-design of Bomberman for Act Zero. Seriously? Making a family friendly series "Hardcore"? No thanks!

[KrazyBean]

The relations between Sonic and Elise...so bloody awkward.

[Chaos Warp]

No explanation needed

EDIT: Okay so an explanation is needed after all

 

Where the fuck do I start? First off, this game tries way to hard to be "mature" what with the Black Arms and the guns and the whole "HERO OR VILLAIN" thing. Secondly, why the hell does Shadow even need to use guns and stuff? It makes no sense when he has Chaos Spear at his disposal.

 

I could go more in depth but eh I'm lazy. Fuck this game.............

Edited June 26, 2013 by Chaos Warp

[Soniman]

 

Got all the obvious examples out of the way.

 

Sonic and Elise because it was dumb and out of place. Werehog because just why? And Shadow because just why and also why the hell does he have/need a gun?

Edited June 26, 2013 by Soniman

[Endy]

The Werehog. I can't believe they to added beat em up gameplay to a series that was already struggling to call a gameplay style its own. On top of that they made it shallow, repetitive, and the levels just dragged forever.

 

Edit: Oh god damnit Soniman.

Edited June 26, 2013 by Enderwoman

[SilentDoom]

The relations between Sonic and Elise...so bloody awkward.

 

Let me correct this to "The Entirety of Sonic 06"

[Nepenthe]

No explanation needed

 

Yes, explanations are actually necessary. Same goes for people throwing out posts mainly composed of images. This is a forum, not a chat-room. Discuss the issue at hand or the thread will be closed. You guys should know the routine by now.

[KHCast]

This is a more positive "What were they Thinking".

 

 

At first I was like, "HOW THE HELL IS THIS GOING TO WORK?! THESE ARE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SIDES OF THE SPECTRUM?!" But surprisingly, after playing it, the characters, the elements, the character interaction and the art style all seemed to mesh together in harmony. Nothing really felt out of place or anything. Yeah it took a couple hours after playing it for me to get used to it, but I don't regret playing this marvelous series.

[DocAzure]

Well, a big one is the entirety of Sonic 06's story, it just takes itself too seriously. But going on about it is beating a very dead horse with a stick.

 

I'm also tempted to bring up a positive 'WHAT WERE THEY THINKING'. When I first heard about Pokemon Conquest, I thought it was the single silliest attempt by Nintendo to cash-in on the franchise. But then I played it, and it turned out to be quite a decent game in it's own right. Much better than most shitty Pokemon spin-offs. (PokePark anyone?)

[AlphaRuby]

To add to my reasoning of my pick of WTF'ery, watch this video here at 1:00.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_geLKoC5c0

 

War, death, artificial humans, angsty lines, just screams Bomberman doesn't it?

Edited June 26, 2013 by dwibs93

[RK64]

I think the a good example of the topic was Prince of Persia The Warrior Within.  Ubisoft bascily took a game that had a Disney-esc vibe and threw it into the "blood, violence, mature!" thing (same thing with Jak II and Shadow).  The game was still good from the reception from it with a tighter combat system and solid level design, but the complete change in style really ticked people off.

[Spin Attaxx]

Metroid Other M and all the things that made it not Metroid.

 

I can't be the only one who was angered at how linear it was, how you can perform little to no sequence breaks and how you can't backtrack to get things because once you get the necessary power up, doors lock and you have to go through more game first.

 

Oh, and the final boss is terrible too. I don't care if it was meant to be symbolic or some shit, you don't rob the player of a satisfying experience just for the sake of a lame plot.

 

Also, because I haven't really harped on him enough:

Just... who looked at this and thought "fans will LOVE this guy!"? He's unoriginal, he's lame and he's an utter bastardisation of the good Doctor and in his debut RUINED what was a pretty interesting character role (acting as a villain for Blaze).

[Kiah]

The entirety of Shadow the Hedgehog comes to my mind first and foremost. I don't know what in the world Sega/Sonic Team was thinking with the thought that this game and the concept behind it was a good idea. From the guns to the cussing, to the trying too hard to be dark theme, to the overwhelming amount of violence with references to death and terrorism, it was just too much, especially for a Sonic game. It's like a bad joke gone completely wrong.

 

As for specifics, I am curious to what Sega and Sonic Team were thinking with the way Sonic was portrayed in this game, mainly as a hyper bumbling idiot that couldn't stand still or be serious. Sonic's characterization in the game was very questionable among other things, so I wonder what was Sega and Sonic Team thinking to badly botch that up the way they did in the game. I also would like to know what they were thinking with Shadow beating up and defeating Sonic, the series' main character, glorifying Shadow in the process:

 

 

And also:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRtJkYgSa7I 

 

Shadow killing Dr. Eggman?! What in the world made Sega and Sonic Team think that THIS was okay?!

 

The whole game had me wondering what Sega and Sonic Team were thinking and how this was possibly a good idea as a whole to add to the Sonic series. As much as I find the game as a whole to be questionable among other things, having 2 of the series' main characters suffer defeat and violence at the hands of Shadow really peaked the "What were they thinking?!" questioning for me. That there was just wrong, as I found the game as a whole to be.   

Edited June 26, 2013 by Sonikku_Kiah

[Old dead account]

The blow up the trash in 30 seconds missions in Mario Galaxy. They feel like something that would be in some shovelware game designed by idiots. There's only 2 of them in the game, but withas high quality as the game as a whole is, those two shitstains really stand out.

[Diogenes]

Kind of a small one, but also very dumb.

Throughout Skyward Sword, electricity is the enemy. Your sword touches it, you get zapped.

During the final battle, you lose access to your skyward strike, where you raise your sword and power it up to shoot an energy slash.

In the second half of the fight, lighting begins to strike around you.

How, in this circumstance, given everything you've learned throughout the game, are you supposed to guess that you're supposed to use your sword as a lightning rod to get an electrified energy slash? Why would you raise your sword when you no longer have access to the ability that is used for. Why would being struck by lighting suddenly be a good thing when you've spent the whole game getting knocked on your ass by touching anything electrified. Why.

[Kamakai]

 

Why they decided to change that...

 

 

 

to that one on the right in the US and UK boggles my mind to this day.

 

[iDEATH]

To add to my reasoning of my pick of WTF'ery, watch this video here at 1:00.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_geLKoC5c0

 

War, death, artificial humans, angsty lines, just screams Bomberman doesn't it?

 

This one's kinda similar

 

Who the hell thought Space Invaders needed a story? Not to mention a gritty real world setting......

Game mechanics were exactly the same, you'd run left and right, hiding behind garbage cans shooting aliens that were also for some reason running sideways.....

 

mental.....and you could finish it in about an hour.

[-Mark-]

Paper Mario: Sticker Star. Almost all of the damn game.

 

Seriously, at what point did they think stripping away any and all plot/ character/ wriiting, reducing the entire NPC cast to Toads and making a pointless battle system where the only rewards are stickers to use in other battles, therefore arguably making battles completely pointless since if you skip them, you don't need to earn any stickers from battles anyway were good ideas?

 

I mean geez, add in the shit level/ puzzle design, and honestly; where the hell were they thinking when they made that game? 

[Semi-colon e]

Metroid Other M in terms of concept was kind of baffling in certain areas.

 

So it's like they want to appeal more to the casuals, so they have Team Ninja in to make the game where it's more difficult and unweildly to control, and there's unskippable cutscenes that the casuals won't give a shit about, because they don't care about Metroid. They also want to make it retro, so they have D-pad movement in a 3D game, which isn't retro at all, it's just annoying, and people didn't like that either. To have the first game with a heavy story be one where they're trying to attract casuals is backwards as most of it relies on you knowing the series anyway.

 

Then I get the idea they wanted to make the game challenging with the combat sequences and stuff, yet the exploration is so basic and almost nonexistant until the post-game, and that most of the bosses can be cheesed with the sense move once you know what you're doing.

 

It's like they tried to cram a Metroid game for the casuals and a game for the hardcore fans into a single game and disappointed everyone.

[iDEATH]

 

Howbest to capitalise on the massive WWE trend? Why, a racing game of course......

 

First of all, why would you make a wrestling game that doesn't feature wrestling?

Secondly....why cars? Where did that even come from? Austin rode a quadbike once....that's all I can think of. Where the fuck did the cars come from? 

 

The plot? Vince McMahon buys all the tv channels and puts WWE superstars in every show....then....car fighting..... *shrugs*

[Diogenes]

... and making a pointless battle system where the only rewards are stickers to use in other battles, therefore arguably making battles completely pointless since if you skip them, you don't need to earn any stickers from battles anyway were good ideas?

Sticker Star has a lot of problems, but this, at least in a conceptual sense, I don't find too offensive.

What do battles in RPGs usually get you, anyway? EXP, money, sometimes equipment, that's about it, right? And what do they do, but feed back into the battle system? EXP for levels for stats/moves for fighting more battles, money for equipment for stats (or for items for various effects) for fighting more battles. In most RPGs you can skip enemies too, you just tend to run into a brick wall at some point where there's an enemy (usually a boss, or just something too strong to run from) that you simply can't beat because you're behind on EXP. And then the only solution is to go grind EXP off the stuff you avoided in the first place (or in particularly bad cases you might not be able to go off and grind, and then you're really fucked).

Honestly I think a lot of stuff that's become core to RPG design is actually really, really bad, and I have to give Sticker Star some credit for actually addressing it, even if it doesn't have entirely viable solutions.

[Vertekins]

'06 has been mentioned enough as has ShTH. Werehog IS NOT A "WTF were they thinking!?" thing to me regarding the concept of it. If the Werehog is guilty of being some odd idea that has no relevance to the accepted 'standard' for Sonic gameplay and is a bizarre concept as an alternate form of Sonic regarding how it came about and what it can do then Sonic's nine forms in Colours are absolutely guilty of the same 'crime'.

 

Sonic Chronicles will always strike me as a "WTF were they thinking?!" instance;

 

 

Why?

 

......Just why?

 

Bioware is a studio of high pedigree and has proven this to be so quite consistently. So why the bloody hell was the ball so tremendously fumbled regarding this game? I hear that the developer was in the middle of an EA takeover yet when you take into consideration that magazine interviews attested to the company's "love" and "respect" for the Sonic franchise, you'd think that they would invest the effort into the game that speaks of this respect regardless of the inconveniences the studio was going through.

 

The result was so mindblowingly incompetent, so starkly amateurish and is filled with such massive missed opportunities and direness that I just have to ask myself the mystifying question about what the hell went wrong. The visuals and music are craptacular, the characters are OOC, Shade is a boring creator's pet who exhibits no compelling personality, the gameplay is unbalanced and boring, the game design is awful as a whole and the entire game is flat-out half-arsed.

 

It boggles the mind.

[Tornado]

The best one is still Kojima using the absolutely immense hype that Metal Gear Solid 2 had as a way to troll pretty much every by copy-pasting every plot element from the original game and then mocking you for not realizing it immediately. You want to play as Snake and do badass things like shoot at Metal Gears and beat up Ocelot?

 

How about you do that for the first hour, then the game decides that you'll play as a whiny new recruit whose sheer inadequacy compared to Snake in the same situation is commented on by several characters in the story; and have Snake show up to do crazy badass things that you can't do yourself just to drive it home?

 

 

 

 

It's no wonder that Kojima waited 6 years and did Snake Eater first before trying to turn Sons of Liberty's ending into a coherent story.

 

 

'06 has been mentioned enough as has ShTH. Werehog IS NOT A "WTF were they thinking!?" thing to me regarding the concept of it. If the Werehog is guilty of being some odd idea that has no relevance to the accepted 'standard' for Sonic gameplay and is a bizarre concept as an alternate form of Sonic regarding how it came about and what it can do then Sonic's nine forms in Colours are absolutely guilty of the same 'crime'.

 

Two entire divisions of Sega didn't go to Sonic Team and say "Hey, these Wisps are kinda dumb, ya know?;" and despite the "Sonic Mario Galaxy" jokes nothing in Colors was anywhere near as transparently derivative and pandering as the Werehog (or ShtH) was.

[Diogenes]

I really don't know why the werehog gets so much crap when it's nothing more than an extension of what they had been doing since Sonic Adventure.

[Tori Himemiya]

Its related to video games but its actually a cartoon.

So you remember that Street Fighter cartoon yah? Well I got a treat for you!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiHRLUIZzs4

Yes all that crazy shit happens in the Darkstalkers cartoon of all things. I know its shit but I find it way too hilarious because of how ridiculous it gets.