#5. Inconsistant Save Game Methods
I’ve had a long-standing gripe about Save Points, and Prince of Persia: Warrior Within is the biggest example of this culprit. As a man in his mid-30s, with two children and a full time job, I don’t want to have to play and play and play the game until I get to the point you’ve told me to go to so that I can save the game. I don’t have the patience or time for that. I stopped playing Dead Rising, a zombie game for cripe’s sake, because of this very ‘feature’. No. It doesn’t add to the sense of tension; no it shouldn’t be used as a gameplay mechanic.
But this year I’m happy to say that there weren’t many games like that…but there were other annoyances. Let’s take Fable 2 for instance: while I don’t mind a single savegame slot (it forces the player to think about their choices) I do mind when the game can be completely corrupted by unsightly bugs. And Fallout 3…while it’s nice to be able to save anywhere, the process is annoying AND gets slower with every save game I make. And I have to admit to abusing the system and I know others who have: save before making a choice and reload to see the other outcome.
Let’s look at Gears of War everyone: not once have I ever had to think about a savegame or point. That’s how it should be. And I applaud their efforts.

#4. Crappy Movie-based Titles
Get it right people! I’m really dreading the Watchman game, especially when they announced it was a Brawler. That game should be an RPG, and nothing else. We know there were other masked vigilantes during the period, why not BE one of them with the Minutemen in your party? Have we not learned anything from the Lord of the Rings games? Build the system, swap in the content. And release the game when it’s ready, not when the movie releases.

#3. Escort Missions
Please. Just stop it. There was a few in Grand Theft Auto IV, I’m currently in the middle of one in Fallout 3…and no matter what game it is, the end result is that the designer diverts (not vary) from the established gameplay and the entire gameplay experience revolves around whether the A.I. has been coded well. Which in most cases, it has not. Let’s get these out of our repertoire and move on. Please?

#2. Weak A.I.
We’ve all been a victim of it and we’ve all been astounded when it’s good. While we are seeing greater quality of artificial intelligence and design, we’re still seeing comrades run headfirst into gunfire and NPCs that run into a wall because they can’t pathfind. Even in Fable 2 and Fallout 3, two of my top games of 2008, we’re still in that ‘uncanny valley’ of character behaviour that make the digital actors seem more like damp sock-puppets hooked on the ends of dogtails than parts of your game experience. And many times it pulls you out of the experience and reminds you that you are, indeed, in your underwear, on your couch, watching pixels and vectors on your shitty-ass TV. There are a lot of games making great progress in both design and programming of artificial intelligence and it’s been on more than one occasion when I’ve wished for one game’s AI to be in another game’s experience.

#1. Lack of Standards and shared resources in the Game Industry
If you look at all of the comments I made about the last year’s issues, you’ll find that the common theme is shared resources. If you look at established industries like auto-manufacturing and film, you see that while there are many different studios that work within these sectors, they all use established and common standards and technology. It is these standards and technologies that make the process more of a factory, where people are less concerned with how they will make hair move real, or characters react convincingly, or animations not look they’ve been sopped in a rue of cornstarch and glue, or how a combustion engine will work. They concentrate on making the next best story or blockbuster, or the next best-selling car. If the Game Industry would share their findings more, we’d see an increase of the quality of games and, hopefully, a decrease in the overhead cost of them because a majority of the time wouldn’t be spent on making engines, or developing the next best shaders. Our industry has matured over the last 10 years and we are just beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel with this: engines like Unreal are becoming more common in the industry; while some look on EA buying developers up as a bad thing, what is great about this, as a member of one of those bought developers, is that we are seeing more shared resources: people are talking to people to find out how they did their great thing. And I for one would love to see BioWare’s story and conversations in a Medal of Honor game featuring Oblivion’s open world and Burnout Paradise’s seamless online tools.

All in all, it was another great year for games, but we have a long way to go to get out of our early twenties and into a more mature stature. But despite the state of the global economy, I hold a lot of promise for the future. Tugging purse strings can do great things for creativity (Star Wars) and being smarter about how things are made can only mean great things for the long term.

As summary, here are my top games from 2008:

Fable 2
Grand Theft Auto IV
Fallout 3
Braid
NHL09
Dead Space
Parts of Mirror’s Edge

So instead, here is my list of The Most Annoying (and disappointing) Things in the 2008 Gaming Scene.

#10. PS3
I used to be a Playstation fan: I traded in my defunct old black Xbox for a PS2 and never looked back . My introduction to Guitar Hero was on PS2. But since day one of when I was working on a PS3 launch title and we found out about the ‘motion controller’ via a press release along with millions of others, to the price point, to the contract-killer like tactics to rub out HD DVD, to the ridiculousness of Home, to the little oversights on it’s online positioning, Sony has just screwed everything up. I figured, loosely mind you, that 2008 would be it for Sony, but no. Microsoft grabbed it’s balls and put one stamp on those dreams. PS3, even with my gaming background and career, is still a console that I have no wish to shell out cash for: the games are weak, few and far between, and it would end up in the same rattan basket that my psp sits in. When a new exclusive game only comes out every 6 months or so, I’d rather be playing on my Xbox, getting achievements and saving my money.

#9. Weak Story
Come on….hasn’t BioWare been doing this long enough? Hasn’t Rockstar showed how a story can be great, but not epic or complex? Why do we still have such weak stories in such mega-blockbuster hits? Why do we see such a lack of desire to hire real writers as full-time employees to ensure that this happens? No, not every game needs it (I could care less what the story is in Geometry Wars 3)…but if you’re shelling out ANY kind of story, then you need to do the Hokey Pokey with both feet in the circle. That’s what it’s all about.

#8. Sequels that drop the ball
Sadly I’m looking at EA Blackbox here. (if you’re an employee or friend, kindly look away). Underground could have been great. And there are moments, fleeting, when it is (that Miami Vice opening is killer). But you dropped the ball. I have a feeling it had to do with development cycle and producer pressures but…you really have given nobody any reason to play this over Most Wanted…or really Hot Pursuit 2 on the PS2. Rock Band 2: sadly, while there is much praise for this game, I think that it is nothing more than a ‘Title Update’ (read patch) with, admittedly, a killer lineup of songs. But I’m loathe to pay the full price for that. Yes. I’m a cheap old man. But that comment leads me to point #7

#7. Short Games that are the same Price
Can I even begin to relate my fury when my daughter finished Dora and the Snow Princess in 15 minutes? $39.99 for this? That is unforgiveable CRAP. I love that mature games are getting shorter because it means a more refined experience…in most cases (Mirror’s Edge excepted), but should I pay $69.99 for Fallout 3 which I have been playing for 60 hours, and pay that same amount for Gears of War 2, which is significantly less? While it could be said that the cost to make these two games are the same so the hours played can’t be considered in the pricing, I see us going down a slippery slope. This isn’t about a half hour difference between a children’s movie and a 3 hour epic. This is the difference between me getting two nights of gaming versus several months. If we don’t start to price our games accordingly, especially during the beginning of an economic depression, we’re going to see the shorter (and probably more polished) games lose out on the dollar: people would rather play Fallout 3 for 3 months, than Mirror’s Edge for a weekend.

#6. Weak supporting Downloadable Content
Developers need to start thinking about strong DLC for their shorter games. A skin for your character doesn’t cut it: it does not provide incentive for replaying a game. Games need to be designed, from the beginning stages, with DLC in mind. Consider Oblivion and Fallout 3: Bethesda has done fantastic jobs and providing content that encourages players to revisit their games, providing even more incentive to shell out cash for their games. Imagine if Dead Space, a fantastic but albeit short game, were to provide a whole new extension to their story, rather than the armour skins that they released.
While there are developers out there who have really nailed supportive downloadable content, nobody has figured out how to market it. While someone like me, or you if you’re reading this blog, stays on top of gaming news via RSS or websites, consider those who don’t: how do they know about this content? NXE, Xbox’s new interface, has helped with this: advertising slots on the interface greet the player as soon as they log into Xbox Live. But what about at purchase point? If someone has Dead Space and Gears of War 2 in their hands, how does EA ensure that that person is going to pick up their game, when they both look very similar in style, gameplay and content? DLC could help here. Knowing what your downloadable content is before you’ve released to manufacturer can help and could be listed as a bullet list item; Point of Purchase advertisements, and TV advertisements, can help as well.
Finally, on this note, let’s consider some of weak attempts to get the consumer dollar: being able to BUY advancement in Need for Speed Underground, or the special Edition content is a ludicrous attempt at milking consumers. It is, at it’s root, also establishing a class-based gaming culture where the people with money and advance through a game and create a stronger online presence.
Let’s all follow Criterion’s example and give people the type of content they want to extend their experience on a game.

Coming tomorrow will be my final top 5 annoyances of 2008.