MGS: Twin Snakes (GC game on Wii):
Why controls in ALL MGS games i've tried are always so consistently BAD. So unbelievably terrible and awful. It's like a moron who designed this UI and controls had a bullet point to make as much basic mistakes as possible and he exceeded the plan.
On a platform that has two analog sticks (PS1) it was a game that uses Ikari Warriors (on NES) style shooting with some auto lock-on that barely works... Scrolling between weapons and equipment is reversed -- it goes up when it you expect it go down. Why? Because. Crouching is bad. Sticking to walls activates when you just want to open a cabinet.
Because controls are barely functioning bosses and enemies were designed around it, so everything is majorly slowed and dumbed down. Instead of, you know, -- FIXING the damn controls. Bosses take into account that you will spend some time struggling to do the most basic stuff and spend more time talking than actually fighting you. Because of sacrificed gameplay design bosses often turn into just mind-numbing trial and error, until finally game takes pity on you and spells out one way to defeat the boss through the character on a radio.
Speaking of talking -- dialogues are terrible. I am guessing all these random speeches about the most random things might have been impressive and profound for a teenager who never opened a single book in his entire life, but nowadays it's all just eye-rolling material.
Voice acting... I can make some allowance for the state of VA in videogames at the time, but i can't justify how awful Snake sounds all the time. In every single phrase he sounds like he is extremely constipated and tries WAY too hard to sound badass. Again, this might have worked on impressionable teenager back in 1996, so i dunno.
From i've seen MGS realy like to remind you how you're actually playing a VIDEOGAME (despite long cutscenes and dialogues dominating over sparse gameplay) -- characters giving out tips won't shut up which buttons you need to press on a controller and stuff and the boss i defeated last night had a gimmick that was ALL based around that (Psycho Mantis).
It's cute the first time it happens, but it gets tiresome when they repeat it again and again. Okay, i get it -- it's a VIDEOGAME (not a good one, mind you) -- i get it! Stop with the winking already.
Captain Toad:
I
think 100%-d first book with Toad, but it feels like it's missing yet another mark or something. Maybe they will add yet another gimmick to force me to replay the levels?
I will reiterate my point about speedrunning levels with touch mechanics -- some ridiculous finger gymnastics required:
Left hand:
Control left stick with index and middle finger
Use your thumb to touch occasional stuff on touchscreen
Right hand:
Press one or two face button with your thumb
With forefinger in a claw position you control camera on right stick
Also while speedrunning i found a flaw with controls in this game.
Climbing ladders is kinda interesting with how many games have trouble with it. It's problematic in Ghost and Goblins, in La-Mulana and many other retro platformers. But it's surprising to find such a mistake in EAD game, of all studios.
When you're climbing ladders and change camera angle your character may stop climbing up because direction you're pushing left stick has become "wrong" to climb up. This was quite an annoyance in some levels where i had to actively control camera all the time to see where i am going.
DMC2 (360):
S ranked mission 1 with Dante -- it's very hard to achieve not because the game is hard, but because combat system is completely borked.
WHY. Why am i still doing this? Oh right -- achievements... I am not looking forward to the one where i have to beat 9000 levels of Bloody Palace mode -- by my estimations it will take 2 hours (in one sitting obviously).
DMC1 (360):
Dante Must Die -- the hardest difficulty of the game. On my way to S-ranking DMD (already s-ranked entirety of Hard), i hit a wall during first Nightmare boss fight in mission 16. I dedicated a night to it and looked up
how other people do it.
This boss is quite tricky -- there are orbs that change colours and may break depending on which attacks you're doing, this impacts how much damage they take. The worst thing about orb status is that it is saved between ALL boss encounters so you have to be aware that you might make boss fight 3 WAY too difficult for yourself if you are not cautious in boss fights 1 and 2. There is also a strategy to WHEN exactly into the fight you let Nightmare eat you and how it affects orbs...
Anyway i figured it out and finally got S-rank.
The problem is, next mission is the final encounter with Nelo Angelo who is the hardest boss of the game. Even surviving him is an achievement by itself, but i also have to do it in time and with enough orbs collected to get that coveted S-rank...
These final missions starting from 15 are all pretty hard because they just throw all bosses at you one after another -- Griffon, Nightmare, Nelo Angelo.