5 Comeback Game Designs to Make a Game Not Suck

GP Editor, Marshall Henderson writes, "If there's one thing I've learned in my one or two or three hundred years of gaming, it's that there are a lot of ways to make a game suck. You could replace your beloved main character, drive that character into the ground through unnecessary sequels, or make Final Fantasy XIII. I understand, it's hard coming up with new ideas to make the game good. So why not let someone else do the work for you?

Here's a list of five awesome things that existed in games, but nobody seems to do anymore."

[Canary]

Awful title. "Things that suck about modern gaming" would be more appropriate.

It's also fairly spartan. Better suited for a blog post than an actual article.

But, still, it's better than most of the shit that gets posted on N4G, so I'll make it a point to remember gamepodunk.com as a site that's maybe not entirely full of hitbaiting shit, so consider this an endorsement.

[SageHonor]

This is a good read.. I'll keep this in mind!

[Lord_Sloth]

All the colors of the dirt spectrum! GAH!!! SHOW ME A RAINBOW!!! GIVE ME AN EYEGAZM!

[Breadisgood]

Shouldn't the title be "5 ways in which games should be more like Final Fantasy 7"?

[MHenderson]

I was gonna disagree, but then I realized I used two Final Fantasy VII examples for two different things. Fair enough, Chief. Fair enough.

[Breadisgood]

Haha, I'm not trying to be a douche or anything, I just thought it was funny. Heck, games should be more like FF7, it's an epic game.

I basically read it as -

Games should:

1. Have materia like in FF7.
2. Have fully fleshed out characters that go around with you in a party like in FF7.
3. Be nice and colourful like FF7.
4. Have protagonists with spiky blonde hair like in FF7.
5. Have cutscenes that are exactly like FF7.

[MHenderson]

I can totes see your point. You're just being honest, there's nothing douchey about that.

I was meaning it more like Materia like FFVII, party members like in Star Ocean, Persona, or Tales games where they do something unrelated to the plot (not like VII, as in VII there's not really any "hanging out" or anything like that, it's all story-driven), prettified graphics like cel-shaded stuff, you know, more stylized and stuff. As for the protagonists, Japanese games are just as guilty about recycling looks, which is terrible. Maybe a few non-white characters, or someone who is cleanly shaven/has a full beard. Just not recycling the look, really.

It was probably a bad choice to use Final Fantasy VII as an example again, especially since a lot of PlayStation-era games did have good, solid cutscenes.

Thanks for reading, and extra thanks for not being a jerk about it!