Misplaced Mechanics is a weekly Wednesday feature, in which Gyuri brings three games with flawed game mechanics to question them and share his frustrations.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Save…and quit for what now?
For those who don’t know, Ace Attorney is a series of point and click adventure games, staring a defense attorney, who’s job is to defend their client in court by proving their innocence. The game is separated into two parts: the investigation and the trial. Like any adventure game, you’ll be looking around for clues, talking to people and gathering information. Unlike most adventure games though, items obtained only serve as evidence to present during the trial. You will very rarely need to do anything more with the items than examine them, as such the items themselves are hardly ever used to solve puzzles. Each case only has one puzzle, namely “who is the killer?”. You only need to use your evidence to find contradictions in statements and to prove your own theories, thus revealing the killer’s true identity.
Honestly, the Ace Attorney games are pretty much my favourite adventure games since the DS entered the market. Most of their functions aren’t new, but the game’s setting makes it feel new and fresh. The Japanese audience has known the series since the 2001 Gameboy Advance game, but everyone else got their first look into the world of attorneys in 2005, on the DS. I think it’s among the best point n click games of the current generation. Not like there is much of a competition.
So what was it that annoyed me? Well, if you haven’t guesses from the title above, it was the save function. It’s actually very user-friendly. The player can save anywhere with the exception of the inventory screen and then continue the game exactly from where he left off. The problem is that you are forced to quit every time you do this. There is a save & quit option and that’s understandable, given that the DS is a handheld, but honestly, it makes no sense that there isn’t a simple save option. Most of the time I’m saving because I made progress, or because I’m at a critical point in the game and I don’t want to mess up. What’s more, this isn’t a quicksave function like in Final Fantasy Advance, where you could save and quit, then come back and continue at the cost of your quicksave getting erased. The saving in PW was clearly made to be a normal save function that creates permanent saves, so why you have to quit to the title screen everytime you save is beyond me.
Final Fantasy IX – Run Zidane, run!
FFIX is of course, a part of the Final Fantasy franchise. It was also a game that tried to go back to the old traditions of the series by having a fantasy setting after the modern worlds of FFVII and FFVIII. For some reason it’s not as popular as some other games in the series, even though it has everything a FF game needs. The game may have started out slow, but the pace eventually picked up and FFIX was just as good an RPG as any other game in the franchise.
FFIX also holds the trophy of “most ridiculous sidequest in an RPG”. Some of you may have heard of the legendary “Excalibur II” sidequest, but if you haven’t, then don’t worry because that’s why I’m here. This certain sword is the strongest weapon for the character Steiner. It’s not something that you actually need, but it is still something worth obtaining. So why is it then, that most FFIX players never got their hands on it? Because of the requirement: you have to reach the sword’s room at the end of the game in eleven hours. That’s right, you have to reach that point, which is normally a 50-hour long task in eleven hours. You have to speedrun a game. I guess Square wanted to put in something for those who do speedruns, but I just find it stupid. The majority of gamers don’t do speedruns and they sure as hell won’t start doing it in a Final Fantasy game. RPGs on the whole are not meant for speedruns. When a sidequest ruins the main aspect of the game – exploring the rich world around you – you know you did something wrong.
Resident Evil 5 – Pocket Armor
When RE4 came out, it shocked the gaming world. It was a game of much controversy for the gaming community, creating a never ending debate of whether or not RE4 changed the series for the better. Regardless, RE4 was a hit and it left it’s mark. RE5 moved even further away from the old RE formula, but ironically, what few mechanics it chose to reuse from the survival horror formula were the ones that worked the least with the new gameplay style.
Enter the inventory management. RE4’s inventory was new and revolutionary, despite the fact that it made the main character into a human killing machine. Sure you somehow had eight different firearms, hundreds of bullets, a dozen grenades and medical kits on your person, but at least in size an egg was an egg and a rifle was a rifle, in other words they space they took to carry in your inventory depended on their overall size. RE5 which is even more action oriented and would be perfect for this system instead relies on the old inventory system. You once again have slots that hold one item each. I suppose this makes the multiplayer easier, but even if I accept that, I still can’t accept how small the inventory is. Nine slots may seem enough for old RE players at first, who are used to the 6-10 slots from the old RE games, but for an action game like RE5 it’s just not enough. There are just way too many different items to gather and you’ll always find your inventory to be full of stuff you need or at least want to keep around. However since there is no way to unload your items – except for restarting from the last checkpoint – you’ll find yourself throwing away valuable items just so you can carry other valuable items.
However, this isn’t even the worst thing. Not by a long shot. Here comes what truly makes the inventory system annoying, the armor. Unlike in RE4, the bulletproof and melee vests take up space in your inventory. What’s more, you can’t combine the two. So if you want to use these, not only will you have to sacrifice quite a bit of money, you’ll also have to sacrifice two item slots. It’s bad enough that you already use up around four slots just by carrying two weapons and their ammo with you, but the vests take up an additional two slots, leaving you with only three slots for various other things like grenades, healing herbs and more ammo. I understand that they wanted to add some penalty for using the vests but damn, unless you’re using infinite ammo, your items will pile up faster than the enemy’s bodies.
